‘The sword was your own. Of course I never for a moment doubted that.’
‘But they believed I was lying.’
‘I can’t persuade myself it signifies greatly what such people think about you. I except Sir Giles. The rest are—’
‘Yet you consented to visit them.’
‘I was in reality Sir Giles’s guest. Not one of the others would have asked me.’
‘Not Geoffrey?’
‘I owe him nothing but undying revenge for Charley.’ Her eyes flashed through the darkness; and she looked as if she could have killed him.
‘But you were plotting against Sir Giles all the time you were his guest?’
‘Not unjustly, though. The property was not his, but yours—that is, as we then believed. As far as I knew, the result would have been a real service to him, in delivering him from unjust possession—a thing he would himself have scorned. It was all very wrong—very low, if you like—but somehow it then seemed simple enough—a lawful stratagem for the right.’
‘Your heart was so full of Charley!’