“And I knew of it.”
“How?”
“My mother had told me that Miss Page was taking the children there, and I’d requested her not to do so as I knew Sue’s feeling about the place.”
“Mr. Ives, were your relations with your wife happy?”
For a moment Patrick Ives sat perfectly still, fighting back the surge of crimson that flooded his pale mockery. When he spoke, his voice, for all its clearness, sounded as though it had travelled back from a great distance.
“Yes,” he said, “they were happy.”
“In so far as you know, she was unaware that you had ceased to care for her?”
“She could hardly have been aware of it,” said Patrick Ives. “From the moment that I first saw her I have loved her passionately—and devotedly—and entirely.”
After a long, astounded silence, Lambert’s voice asked heavily, “You expect us to believe, in the face of the evidence that has been presented to us here, that you have been faithful to Mrs. Ives?”
“It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me what you believe,” said Patrick Ives. “I don’t regard fidelity to Sue as particularly creditable. The fool of the world would have enough sense for that.”