"Charles? He was always prejudiced against him—always his enemy!"
"That is why; he is very just, very conscientious. He told me this afternoon."
Mary's voice sank a little lower. She was standing now. She could see her prospective partner looking for her. She wondered vaguely whether Eve accepted the alternative, whether she realized that, to prove Philip innocent, was to establish her husband's guilt, his original wrong-doing, and subsequent cowardice.
"But—Charles! How did he know? Does he believe it? Who told him?"
Mary had gently disengaged her arm from Eve's restraining hand. She stepped back for an instant, excusing herself to her expectant cavalier.
"One of Philip's friends told him to-day—proved it to him, he says.
It was a Mr. Oswyn."
A minute later Mary found herself in the ball-room, making heroic efforts to divide her entire attention impartially between the strains of the band and the remarks of her partner.
She was afraid to pass in review the conduct of those few minutes which had seemed so long. Had it really all occurred in the interval between two waltzes?
For the present she drew a mental curtain over the scene. She lacked the courage to gaze upon her handiwork, although she was not without a hopeful instinct that, when she criticised it in sober daylight, she would even approve of what she had done. Her determination did not, however, carry her further than the middle of the dance.
The room was now crowded to repletion, and she readily fell in with her partner's suggestion that they should take a turn in the cooler atmosphere of the garden; and as she passed the threshold, a rapid, retrospective glance informed her that Eve was once more playing her arduous part of hostess.