"And then the same thing will happen there! Is that all you can suggest, you who married me after hearing with your own ears every scrap of evidence that they could bring against me?"
"Have you anything better to suggest yourself, Rachel?"
"I have," she answered, looking him full and sternly in the face, in the now forgotten presence of their three guests. "Find out who is guilty, if you really want people to believe that I am not!"
Steel did not start, though there came a day when one at least of the listening trio felt honestly persuaded that he had; as a matter of fact, his lips came more closely together, while his eyes searched those of his wife with a wider stare than was often seen in them, but for two or three seconds at most, before dropping in perplexity to the floor.
"How can I, Rachel?" her husband asked quietly, indeed gently, yet with little promise of acquiescence in his tone. "I am not a detective, after all."
But that was added for the sake of adding something, and was enough to prove Steel ill at ease, to the wife who knew him as no man ever had.
"A detective, no!" said she, readily enough. "But you are a rich man; you could employ detectives; you could clear your wife, if you liked."
"Rachel, you know very well that you are cleared already."
"That is your answer, then!" she cried scornfully, and snatched her eyes from him at last, without waiting for a denial. She was done with him, her face said plainly; he looked at her a moment, then turned aside with a shrug.
But Rachel's eyes went swiftly round the room; they alighted for an instant upon Morna Woodgate, leaning forward upon the sofa where they had sat together, eager, enthusiastic, but impotent as a woman must be; they passed over the vicar, looking stolid as usual, and more than a little puzzled; but at last they rested on Langholm's thin, stooping figure, with untidy head thrust forward towards her, and a light in his dreamy eyes that kindled a new light in her own.