“This mourning which I wear,” she began gently, “I put on when I received the news of your downfall.”
“My downfall?” broke in Harry hotly. “Great heavens, you don't say that you, too, have been carried away by this wretched village slander?”
“I put it on,” she continued, unmindful of the interruption, “because I suffered a loss which was greater than any merely physical death could have occasioned.”
“I don't understand you.”
“My faith in you as a man superior to your fellows died then. This was a much more cruel blow than your bodily death would have been.”
“'Fore gad, you take a pleasant view of my decease—a much cooler one, I must confess, than I am able to take of that interesting event in my history.”
Her great eyes blazed, and she seemed about to reply hotly, but she restrained herself and went on with measured calmness:
“The reason I selected you from among all other men, and loved you, and joyfully accepted as my lot in life to be your devoted wife and helpmate, was that I believed you superior in all manly things to other men. Without such a belief I could love no man.”
She paused for an instant, and Harry managed to stammer:
“But what have I done to deserve being thrown over in this unexpected way?”