“I don’t want to intrude on your confidence, but,—but”—with deep gravity and a lowered voice, “have you allowed yourself to become involved in some—conspiracy against the government?”
The unwelcome laugh had crept into her eyes as she lifted her heavy lids and glanced at him.
“Oh, you know I haven’t!”
Then the contending emotions were resolved into tears, and slowly and painfully they overflowed her sapphire eyes, coursing one by one down her white cheeks.
“I should not have spoken,” he said, contritely, “I only add to your distress. Forgive me. I’d better go.”
“No—no—don’t. But I can’t explain. I’ve promised—only this I know—I can’t say how I know, but I know that my best friend has told me a lie—a wicked, defamatory, deliberate lie—and I can’t forgive it.”
“Why should you forgive it?” he asked. “It is the limit, the unforgivable.”
There was a momentary pause. The tears welled up anew in the blue eyes and the white cheeks were all wet with them; however, she mopped them with her handkerchief rolled into a little ball for the purpose.
“It was such a cruel lie, deliberately planned, so circumstantial,” she sobbed, “so plausible, apparently confirmed by facts. I do believe it would have deceived anybody, everybody, but me. I can’t controvert it—the circumstances are out of my scope. But I know—I know—I know of my own accord,—I can’t say how,—but every breath I draw, every fiber in me is a witness of the truth—the eternal truth!”
She burst into a tempest of sobs, and Ducie was carried beyond bounds.