"So I presumed--"
"Look here, Miss Manwaring; this is a serious business with me. Give me your word---"
"What makes that essential? Why do you think I'd lie--to you '?"
It was just that little quaver prefacing her last two words which precipitated the affair. Otherwise a question natural enough under the circumstances would have proved innocuous. But for the life of her she could not control her voice; on those simple words it broke; and so the question became confession--confession, accusation and challenge all in, one.
It created first a pause, an instant of breathless suspense, while Lyttleton stared in doubt and Sally steeled herself, with an effect of trembling, reluctant, upon the brink of some vast mystery.
Then: "To me?" he said slowly. "You mean me to understand you might lie to another-but not to me?"
Her response was little better than a gasp: "You know it!"
He acknowledged this with half a nod; he knew it well, too well.
Now she must have seemed very lovely to the man in that moment of defiance. She saw his eyes lighten with a singular flash, saw his face darken suddenly in the paling moonlight, and heard the sharp sibilance of his indrawn breath.
And whether or not it was so, she fancied the wind had fallen, that the night was hushed once more, and now more profoundly than it had ever been, as though the very world were standing still in anticipation.