"Stop," she said to the footman, and then turning to her husband said: "Let us walk a little way in the woods down by the water."
The carriage stopped and the footman jumped down and assisted Senator March to alight, and Mrs. March followed him. The two walked together into a path which led down to the water where there was a bench concealed by some shrubbery. They both looked so pale, and Senator March moved so heavily, that the footman exchanged looks with the coachman and remarked, putting his finger on his nose:
"Something is up between 'em."
Down by the water Senator March dropped upon the bench and Alicia seated herself beside him.
"It is a great blow," he said after a minute, "a very great blow. It is the first aspersion cast upon me or any of my family during the thirty years of my public life. It is easy enough to disprove it, but it is humiliating and terrible that such things should be said of you and me, my poor, innocent Alicia."
It was the very phrase which General Talbott had so often used in Alicia's presence, and it always moved and touched her, but not as it did now. With her father, Alicia had ever felt a sense of triumph that she had saved him the knowledge of much that would have maddened him, but with her husband she felt a strange impulse to confess all. She was, however, not a woman to act on such impulses and she remained silent, turning her head away. She could feel at first the pity in Senator March's glance, and then by intuition she felt, rather than saw, her husband's look change from pity to startled inquiry and then to dreadful certainty. Presently he said, in a voice so stern that she scarcely recognised it as his own:
"Tell me, is it true? If you will deny it, I will take your word against that of the whole world."
It would have been so easy to say "No," and Alicia could have said it readily enough to any person on earth except her husband, but something seemed to rise within her to forbid the lie, and she remained silent: she either could not or would not speak. All around them was the silence of the woods, and they were themselves so still that a robin, more daring than his fellows, hopped close by their feet and chirruped a sweet little song. After a long pause Senator March repeated, in the same voice:
"Will you not speak? Am I to believe--" He stopped, and Alicia longed to speak, but as before no words came to her.
She rose as if to walk towards the carriage, but she swayed so that her husband took her arm to support her. Then they went up the hill and, entering the waiting carriage, were driven towards the city. Not a word was spoken during the homeward drive. When they reached the asphalted streets Senator March directed the coachman to drive to the smart hotel where Colegrove had a splendid suite of rooms. Alicia's trembling heart sank lower; she thought it a fearful blunder that Senator March's carriage should be seen at Colegrove's hotel, but Senator March had never in his life concealed anything, and he was too stunned to adopt any of the small precautions of fear. When they reached the hotel he alighted and said with somewhat of his usual composure to the footman: