"And you tried to avoid me?"
"When you have something to conceal, it is wise to avoid anyone connected with it."
She answered him very quietly, but he knew instinctively that she was fighting him with her whole strength. It was almost more than he could bear.
"Believe me," he said, "I am not a man to wantonly betray a woman's secret. I have kept yours faithfully for years. But when within the last few days I came to know who you were, and that your husband, Major Coningsby, was contemplating making a second marriage, I was in honour bound to speak."
"You told him?" She raised her eyes for a single instant, and he read in them a reproach unutterable.
His heart smote him. What had she endured, this woman, before taking that final step to cut herself off from the man whose name she had borne? But he would not yield an inch. He was goaded by pitiless necessity.
"I told him," he answered. "But I had no means of proving what I said. And he refused to believe me."
"And now?" she almost whispered.
He heard the note of tragedy in the words, and he braced himself to meet her most desperate resistance.
"Before I go further," he said, "let me tell you this! Slight though you may consider our acquaintance to be, I have always felt—I have always known—that you are a good woman."