“Not on the very day of Sir Charles’s death?”
The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the “No” which I saw rather than heard.
“Surely your memory deceives you,” said I. “I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran ‘Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o’clock.’”
I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort.
“Is there no such thing as a gentleman?” she gasped.
“You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?”
“Yes, I did write it,” she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. “I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me.”
“But why at such an hour?”
“Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier.”
“But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?”