"Richard!" she exclaimed. "Richard!" and she caught at the mantel and held to it.
His eyes did not leave her for an instant. He nodded his head with a significance whose meaning was best known to himself.
"Sit down," he said. "I see you did not know that."
She did as he told her. It was as if such a flash of light had struck across her mental vision as half blinded her.
"Not Richard!" she cried out; and even as she said it a thousand proofs rushed back upon her and spoke the whole shameful truth for themselves.
Blundel came nearer to her, his homely, angry face, in spite of its anger, expressing honest good feeling as strongly as any much handsomer one might have done.
"I knew there had been deep work somewhere," he said. "I saw it from the first. As for you, you have been treated pretty badly. I supposed they persuaded you that you might as well amuse one man as another,—and I was the man. I dare say there is more behind than I can see. You had nothing to gain as far as you knew, that's plain enough to me."
"No," she exclaimed, "it was not I who was to gain. They did not think of—of me!"
"No," he went on, "they lost sight of you rather often when they had a use for you. It's apt to be the way. It's time some one should think of you, and I mean to do it. I am not going to say anything more against those who—made the mistake" (with a resentful shuffle of his shoulders as he put it thus mildly), "than I can help, but I am going to tell you the truth. I have heard ugly stories for some time, and I've had my suspicions of the truth of them; but I meant to wait for proof, and it was given me this afternoon. More was said to me than it was safe to say to an honest man, and I let the person who talked go as far as he would, and he was too desperate to be cautious. I knew a bold move was to be made, and I guessed it would be made to-night."
He took the envelope from his pocket where he had tucked it unopened. His face grew redder and hotter.