"What do you think he deserved?"
She bit her lip.
"I think you are the most detestable human being who ever breathed," she faltered. "Supposing I go to the police?"
"Don't be melodramatic," he begged. "In the first place, what have you to tell? In the second place, in this country, at any rate, a wife cannot give evidence against her husband."
"You admit that something has happened?" she asked eagerly.
"I admit nothing," he replied, "except that Anthony Palliser has disappeared under circumstances which you and I know about, that he has forged my name and entered into a disgraceful conspiracy with you, and that he has stolen from my wife a political document of great importance to me."
"I knew nothing about the political document," she said quickly.
"Possibly not," he agreed. "Still, the fact remains that Tony was a thoroughly bad lot. I find myself able to regard the possibility of an accident having happened to him with equanimity. Have you anything further to say?"
She sat looking down on the floor for several minutes. She had probably, Tallente decided as he watched her, some way of suffering in secret, all the more terrible because of its repression. When she looked up, her face seemed pinched and older. Her voice, however, was steady.
"Let us have an understanding," she said. "You do not desire my return to Martinhoe?"