There was no outcry of surprise from Edenborough. He had some pride. But his knees began to tremble in the firelight, and his unclenched hands to twitch.
"I don't believe it," he exclaimed at length. "You tell me what you know!"
"All that you yourself suspected, and made yourself ill with suspecting—and couldn't sleep for suspecting—long ago!"
Pitiful tone and tender hand carried a heavier conviction than the words. And now it was the patient who had sunk into the chair, the doctor bending over his bowed and quivering shoulders.
"Mark my words closely"
"You are not the first man, my dear Edenborough," he went on, "who would seem to have been betrayed in cold blood by a woman—by the woman. Mark my words closely. I say it seems so. I would not condemn the greatest malefactor unheard. I meant to hear Miss Trevellyn first—feeling in my bones, against all reason, that there may still be some unimaginable explanation. But, if the worst be true of her, then the best is true of you; for you are the first man I have known bear the brunt as you have borne it, my very dear fellow!"