"I dared not see you—lest——"
"Lest you discovered me to be even a greater traitress than you had already learned me to be," she said in measured tones. "I cannot blame you. The fault was mine. I have given you ample reason why your faith in me should have ended."
"That is not true," he exclaimed. "I could not bring myself to believe you had acted so. But it was horrible enough as it was. It was because I had not lost faith in you that I hid the letter so as to prevent anyone else seeing it. By doing so I was not acting as I should have acted towards the Bank."
"I never had it, never. I wish I had not seen it, for it"—her voice lost its hardness as she spoke—"it is the last straw. Whatever else I knew my husband to be, I held him innocent of that crime. When you and all the others suspected him, I would not, could not bring myself to believe it. But now——"
Her voice caught and she turned aside, sinking into a chair where she sat with averted face and bowed head.
"No wonder you did not wish to see me again," she added presently, as he did not speak. "What am I now? The wife of a thief, an outlaw, one who was almost a murderer. Oh, leave me! I should not have sent to you. Leave me. There is nothing for me now but death or degradation."
"You must not say that, Jess, you must not say that," he said in a strained voice as he came and stood beside her. "Whatever he may have done, you are not affected by it. Appearances cannot well be blacker against him than they are at present, but you must still remember you are not responsible for his ill-deeds. No one here, least of all myself, blames you. Besides, he has not yet been convicted."
"Not after that letter? There can be no doubt after that. He must have had it with him when he was at Taloona, and dropped it."
"But it was opened, torn open, when the trooper found it. If Eustace had dropped it, surely it would have been sealed up."
She glanced at him quickly.