That was all—merely five oblong slips of chemically printed paper, and yet on the face of them they told a damning and a condemning story.
She stared at them, she who was absolutely innocent of thought or intent of wrong-doing, and could feel the fabric of her domestic life trembling before it came crashing down.
"Oh, but this is too horrible for words!" the distressed lady cried out. "How could anybody have been so cruel, so malicious, as to follow us and waylay us and catch us in these positions? It's monstrous!"
"Somebody did catch you, then, in compromising attitudes—you admit that?"
"You twist my words to give them a false meaning!" she exclaimed. "You are trying to trap me into saying something that would put me in a wrong light. I can explain—why, the whole thing is so simple when you understand."
"Suppose you do explain, then. Get me right, Mrs. Propbridge—I'm all for you in this affair. I want to give you the best of it from every standpoint."
So she explained, her words pouring forth in a torrent. She told him in such details as she recalled the entire history of her meeting with the vanished Mr. Murrill—how a doctored telegram sent her husband away and left her alone, how Murrill had accosted her, and why and what followed—all of it she told him, withholding nothing.
He waited until she was through. Then he sped a bolt, watching her closely, for upon the way she took it much, from his viewpoint, depended.
"Well," he said, "if that's the way this thing happened and if you've told your husband about it"—he dragged his words just a trifle—"why should you be so worried, even if these pictures should reach him?"