She thought of Richard once more, and then of the children sleeping upstairs, and of the quiet, innocent day she had spent with them. They did not know that she was an intriguing woman, whom people talked of; she had never realized it herself to the full until this moment. They had delicately forborne giving any name to the thing she had done; but this man, who judged matters in a straightforward fashion, would find a name for it. But there was only one answer for her to make.
"It is a letter I was to give you," she said.
"And it is from your husband?"
"I have not read it," she replied.
He stopped short a moment and looked at her—with a sudden suggestion of doubt and bewilderment that was as bad as a blow.
"Look here!" he said. "You were going to give it to me,—you intended to do it."
"Yes."
He gave her another look,—amazement, anger, disbelief, struggling with each other in it,—and then thrust his obstinate fists into his pockets again and planted himself before her like a rock.
"By the Lord!" he said. "I won't believe it!"
The hard common-sense which had been his stronghold and the stand-by of his constituents for many a year came to his rescue. He might not know much of women; but he had seen intrigue, and trickery, and detected guilt, and it struck him if these things were here, they were before him in a new form.