“There, there, wife, that will do! Let’s talk it over without sentiment; I haven’t a bit of romance left in me, my dear. Life out here has cleared it off. You may as well know the truth as at any future time. Bah! Let’s throw away all this flimsy foolery. You’ve known it all along, only you’ve been too brave to show it.”
“I—known the truth?” she faltered. “You believe this?”
“Yes,” he said, without reading the horror and despair in her eyes; and the brutal callousness of his manner seemed to grow. “What’s the use of shamming innocence? You knew what was in the box.”
“I knew what my husband told me; that there were papers to prove his innocence,” she replied.
“You knew that?”
“They were my husband’s words; and in my wifely faith I said that they were true.”
He looked at her mockingly.
“You play your part well, Millicent,” he said; “but remember we are in Sydney, both twenty years older than when we first met at King’s Castor. Is it not time we talked like man and woman, and not, after all that we have gone through, like a sentimental boy and girl?”
“Robert!”
“There, that will do,” he said. “You understand now why you must hold your tongue.”