"She'll be here at three-forty. You can wait."
It was all bravado on the part of Oates, as he was in deadly fear lest his wife should come in and learn all. True this discreditable connection had taken place before his marriage: but Mrs. Oates would not take that fact into consideration, and would make things very unpleasant for him. With all his cleverness and craft, Silas was a coward at heart; so as Mrs. Belswin sat there, evidently determined to await the arrival of his wife, he skirmished round, in order to find out some weak spot in her armour by which he could beat her. Had he betrayed fear, Mrs. Belswin would have at once perceived that she had the advantage; but he did nothing but sit smiling before her, and all she could do in her mad rage was to tell all to Mrs. Oates, thereby cutting her own throat, and benefiting nothing by revelation.
"Say," queried Mr. Oates, airily, "why don't you look up Pethram?"
"He is dead.'
"Is that so?" said Oates, somewhat startled. "Died in New Zealand, I guess?"
"No, he didn't. He died in England."
"What did you kill him for?"
It was simply an idle, malicious question, as Silas never for a moment dreamed that the husband and wife had met, or that there had been anything strange about the husband's death. Foolish Mrs. Belswin, never thinking, flashed out at once, on the impulse of the moment, quite forgetting that she was putting a sword into her enemy's hand.
"I didn't kill him. How dare you say so? No one knows who murdered him."
Silas jumped up from his seat with an exclamation of surprise, as his apparently idle question had evidently drawn forth something important.