“And half a dozen pads, too, no doubt?”
“No, I wrote it on the flyleaf of the book—Cytherea, you know.”
“For what purpose did you write this down?” The voice of Mr. Lambert was the voice of one who has run hard and long toward a receding goal.
“It sounded important to me; I didn’t want to make any mistakes.”
“Quite so. So your story is that you took this information, which you admit you acquired by eavesdropping on the woman you claim had been invariably kind and generous to you, straight to her husband, in the fond expectation of ruining both their lives?”
“Oh, no, indeed—in the expectation of saving them. Mr. Ives had been even kinder to me than Mrs. Ives; I was desperately anxious to help them both.”
“And this was your idea of helping them?”
“It was probably a stupid way,” said Miss Page humbly. “But it was the only one that I could think of. I was afraid they were planning to elope, and I thought that Mr. Ives might be able to stop them. You see, I hadn’t realized then the real significance of the telephone conversation.”
“What real significance, if you please?”
“The fact that someone must have told Mrs. Ives all about Mr. Ives’s affair with Mrs. Bellamy before she went out that night,” said Miss Page softly.