"And yet you have not mentioned Captain Rodolphe to him?" said Aunt Philippa. Her eyes were fixed unsparingly upon the girl's face, and she saw the colour dying away as swiftly as it had risen. "That is strange," she remarked, with emphasis.
"It is not strange!" flashed back Chris. The laugh had gone from her lips, leaving them white, but she faced her adversary unflinchingly. It was open war now—a fierce and bitter struggle for the mastery, for which she knew herself to be ill-equipped, but in which she must fight to the last. She knew that Aunt Philippa had always regarded her with cold dislike, and it dawned upon her in that moment that now—now that her position was assured, now that she was rich and popular and the wife of a man who was universally honoured in that great world of society in which her aunt had always striven for a leading place—the dislike had turned to a cruel jealousy that demanded her downfall. And she was horribly at her mercy; deep in her heart she knew that also, but she would not own it, even to herself. Aunt Philippa had not yet unmasked the truth. Until she succeeded in doing so, all was not lost.
"It is not strange," she repeated, and this time she spoke quietly, summoning all her strength to the unequal contest. "Captain Rodolphe was not of sufficient importance to mention to Trevor. Besides—"
"Although you hate him so bitterly!" Aunt Philippa reminded her.
Chris pressed on, ignoring the thrust. "Besides, Trevor does not need, does not so much as wish to be told of every little incident that ever happened in my life. He prefers to trust me."
"And have you never abused his confidence?" asked Aunt Philippa.
It was inevitable. She flinched ever so slightly, but she covered it with instant defiance. "What do you mean, Aunt Philippa?"
Aunt Philippa made no direct reply. She knew the value of insinuation in such a battle as this. "Ask yourself that question," she said impressively.
It might have provided a way of escape, at least temporarily, but Chris was too far goaded to see it. "Tell me what you mean," she said.
Aunt Philippa's thin lips smiled ironically. "My dear, are you really so blind, or is deceit the very air you breathe? Can you look me in the face and assure me that nothing has ever passed between you and your husband's secretary of which you would not wish him to know?"