“Will you tell me, Miss Nunn, why you behave so coldly to me?”
“Surely that doesn’t need any explanation, Mrs. Widdowson?”
“You mean that you believe everything Mr. Widdowson has said?”
“Mr. Widdowson has said nothing to me. But I have seen your sister, and there seemed no reason to doubt what she told me.”
“She couldn’t tell you the truth, because she doesn’t know it.”
“I presume she at least told no untruth.”
“What did Virginia say? I think I have a right to ask that.”
Rhoda appeared to doubt it. She turned her eyes to the nearest bookcase, and for a moment reflected.
“Your affairs don’t really concern me, Mrs. Widdowson,” she said at length. “They have been forced upon my attention, and perhaps I regard them from a wrong point of view. Unless you have come to defend yourself against a false accusation, is there any profit in our talking of these things?”
“I have come for that.”