“I am not here to smirch his reputation.”
“What is it that he has done?”
“I do not care to tell you.”
“That is cowardly, Philip. I have a right to know. If your solicitude for me is genuine you will tell me. If this man has been evil either in heart or conduct I must know it.”
The hour of Westgate’s temptation had come. Against her peremptory demand, against his own fierce desire to justify himself in the eyes of the woman whom he loved, arose the gentleman’s instinct to speak no evil of another, to hold sacred the knowledge with which the rector had frankly intrusted him. And yet—could any time be more opportune, could any occasion be more appropriate than this to smash the idol which this woman had been worshiping to her own destruction? He looked into her eyes and was silent. They had reached the foot of the steps leading up to her door. She turned, grasped an ornament carved into the stone of the newel-post and faced him insistently.
“Philip! Speak to me. Tell me what you know.”
“I will not tell you, Ruth.”
“Why not?”
“Because I respect myself, and I love you.”
“You love me, and yet you come to me with the defaming gossip of the town, and when I ask you for facts that I may defend myself, you will not give them to me. You have entered into a conspiracy with him and his wife to wreck my peace of mind, and I shall end by hating all three of you.”