"After you left us, I questioned Miss Fitzgerald about the part she'd played in my marriage."
Stanley nodded.
"You can understand that I was very angry. Whose feelings would not have been outraged at discovering that they'd been so played upon? I'm sure that my husband was as innocent of the deception as I."
She paused a second, but the Secretary did not speak, and she continued, afraid, perhaps, that he might say something to overthrow her theory.
"I dare say I forgot myself—in fact I'm sure I did—and said things that I now regret; but in the heat of the argument she taunted me with the fact that she had it in her power to have my husband cashiered from the navy, if she chose to tell what she knew. Is this true?"
"Did she specify what he'd done?" asked Stanley, the horrid suspicion that Belle was not innocent once more reasserting itself with increased force.
"No, but she said it was something he'd done in London, during his present absence."
"My God!" murmured the Secretary, as the full force and meaning of this avowal became apparent to him, and he saw that Belle must be fully cognisant of the plot.
"Don't tell me it's true!" cried Lady Isabelle.
"I'm afraid it is," he replied.