'Do you mean to say that this book shows any duplicity of Mrs. Griswold's?' asked Carey earnestly.
'Not the least in the world,' said Bryan Duval. 'God forbid for an instant that I should be supposed to hint such a thing of so estimable a lady. It was out of love and regard for her husband that she had to keep back certain facts from his knowledge, as you shall now hear. My next quotation, as you will see, is taken later in the book.
"With all the relief which the absence of Alston's friend has given me, there is a great pang of pain for Alston himself, and a horrid sense of a barrier of concealment between us."'
'She alludes here to Alston's friend. You see farther on she speaks more plainly:
"I have allowed so many days to elapse before I force myself into commencing this self-communing, in sheer uncertainty of what my line of duty is; and though I am now tolerably clearly convinced that neither now nor ever must I reveal to Alston what has passed, the conviction invests my task of writing to him with great pain and difficulty. Somehow we seem to be doubly parted; first by distance, then by a secret. How shall I bear to see him take up his relations with Warren just where he dropped them, and to know, as I do know, how his confidence is betrayed?"
'There you see for the first time comes out the man! There is then a passage to say she does not think that Warren has been false to her husband in their business relations; but mark the next passage:
"It would do my husband such harm in every way to know what has occurred; his own frankness and loyalty of nature could hardly withstand so great a shock; the world would be changed for him. No, he shall never know it; I will trust to the chapter of accidents, or rather, I should say, to the beneficence of Providence, to preserve us harmless from his false friend."'
'Good God!' cried Carey, starting up, 'this scoundrel must have made love to Helen! Is not that how you interpret it?'
'Exactly,' said Bryan Duval; 'and immediately after Griswold's departure; but he must have met his match in Mrs. Griswold. By the context, it would seem that she must have insisted upon his never setting foot in her house again, and that he thereupon agreed to go, as he told her, to Chicago, as this passage would seem to insinuate:
"How cleverly, how skilfully this man has carried out this sudden and complete change of all his plans; how reasonably he seems to have accounted for leaving New York; no one seems surprised, and I am quite certain not the slightest shade of suspicion that his departure is of any consequence to me has presented itself to the mind of any of our common acquaintance, though the close tie between him and Alston is perfectly well known."'