The frown vanished; for a moment, Mr. Bellamy looked frankly diverted. Were these, inquired his lifted brows, the terrors of cross-examination? “We certainly did nothing of the kind. I thought that I’d already explained that I hadn’t been over that road in ten years.”
“I heard your explanation. Now, will you kindly explain to us why you didn’t use it?”
“Why?” inquired Stephen Bellamy blankly.
“Why, consumed with anxiety as you were for the safety of your wife, didn’t it occur to you to go to this gardener’s cottage, where you were assured that she was having a rendezvous with another man?”
“I was not assured of any such thing. I was most positively assured that Mr. Ives had not gone there to meet her. Nor was I in anxiety at all about my wife during my drive with Mrs. Ives. I believed that she had gone to the movies.”
“Very well, when you found out that she wasn’t at the movies, why didn’t you go then to the cottage?”
“Mrs. Ives gave me her word of honour that Mr. Ives was at home. It seemed incredible to both of us that she would have waited there for over two hours.”
“Incredible to both of you that she could have waited? I thought you wished us to believe that you had such entire confidence in her love for you that you were perfectly convinced that she had never been near the cottage.”
“I”—the whitened lips tightened resolutely—“I did not believe that she had been. It was simply a hypothesis that I accepted in desperation—a vain attempt to believe that she might be safe, after all.”
“It would have consoled you to know that she was safe in the gardener’s cottage with Patrick Ives?”