It was in his wife's handwriting.
"Dearest...cannot possibly get down tonight...." In his wife's handwriting. Certainly. Yes. His wife's. And Ronder had seen it.
He looked across at Miss Milton. "This is not my wife's handwriting," he said. "You realise, I hope, in what a serious matter you have become involved--by your hasty action," he added.
"Not hasty," she said, moistening her lips with her tongue. "Not hasty, Archdeacon. I have taken much thought. I don't know if I have already told you that I took the letter myself at the door from the hand of your own maid. She has been to the Library with books. She is well known to me."
He must exercise enormous, superhuman, self-control. That was his only thought. The tide of anger was rising in him so terribly that it pressed against the skin of his forehead, drawn tight, and threatened to split it. What he wanted to do was to rise and assault the woman standing in front of him. His hands longed to take her! They seemed to have life and volition of their own and to move across the table of their own accord.
He was aware, too, once more, of some huge plot developing around him, some supernatural plot in which all the elements too were involved--earth, sun and sky, and also every one in the town, down to the smallest child there.
He seemed to see behind him, just out of his sight, a tall massive figure directing the plot, a figure something like himself, only with a heavy black beard, cloudy, without form....
They would catch him in their plot as in a net, but he would escape them, and he would escape them by wonderful calm, and self-control, and the absence of all emotion.
So that, although his voice shook a little, it was quietly that he repeated:
"This is not in my wife's handwriting. You know the penalties for forgery." Then, looking her full in the face, he added, "Penal servitude."