“Yes. But we must get them. We must go home. You see that, Tom, don’t you? We must go home to clear our names.”
“We can’t go, Livy, for the reason I told you before.”
“They’re saying these things about us, though.”
“Who is? Some tea-drinking old maids who’ve got at your uncle Nestor. He doesn’t like me, as you know, so naturally he believes them.”
“But, Tom, what could have started the old maids, as you call them?”
“Our hurried leaving, of course. What else?”
“Ah,” she said, turning very pale, as though a bitter thought had come to her. “Charles, Charles. Oh, why did not Uncle Nestor write to me, instead of you? He need not have told you the scandal.”
Margaret, who had gone to the window with Perrin, to look out over the darkened harbour, while the husband and wife talked together, now turned gravely towards her, too sad to answer.
“I didn’t mean that, Charles.” She looked from one face to another, searching for a key to the puzzle, for a way back to the peace of ten minutes ago.
“What were you doing, Charles, when I came in just now?”