He fancied that she was yielding, but her eyes fell once more upon that fatal envelope, and her tone when she spoke was colder than ever.
“That was a moment of madness,” she said. “I was lonely. I did not know what I was saying.”
“I will have your reason for this,” he said. “I will have your true reason.”
She looked at him for a moment with fire in her eyes.
“You need a reason. Ask your own conscience. What sort of a standard of life yours may be I do not know, yet in your heart you know very well that every word you have spoken to me has been a veiled insult, every time you have come into my presence has been an outrage. That is what stands between us, if you would know—that.”
She pointed to the envelope still resting upon the mantelpiece. He recognized the handwriting, and turned a shade paler. Her eyes noted it mercilessly.
“But your sister,” he said. “What has she told you?”
“Everything.”
He was a little bewildered.
“But,” he said, “you do not blame me altogether?”