He came near, but could not look her in the eyes.
'My dearest'—his voice shook—'it was an infamous lie about you—that you had been there——'
'Why, of course I have! You know that I have.'
'She meant more than that. She said you had been there secretly—at night——'
Hugh Carnaby—the man who had lived as high-blooded men do live, who had laughed by the camp-fire or in the club smoking-room at many a Rabelaisian story and capped it with another, who hated mock modesty, was all for honest openness between man and woman—stood in guilty embarrassment before his own wife's face of innocence. It would have been a sheer impossibility for him to ask her where and how she spent a certain evening last winter; Sibyl, now as ever, was his ideal of chaste womanhood. He scorned himself for what he had yet to tell.
Sibyl was gazing at him, steadily, inquiringly.
'She made you believe this?' fell upon the silence, in her softest, clearest tones.
'No! She couldn't make me believe it. But the artful devil had such a way of talking——'
'I understand. You didn't know whether to believe or not. Just tell me, please, what proof she offered you.'
Hugh hung his head.