"You convinced me. I rushed from the house in a tumult of wonder and doubt. But I had seen you, and could not go on doubting. Your eyes, your voice, the pride in your glance, the pride of wounded innocence, defiant, yet pathetic! Who that had seen you could go on doubting? Lady Perivale—Grace—can you forgive a jealous fool who made his love for you a rod to scourge him, whose thoughts have been cruel to you, but, God knows, how much more cruel to himself?"
"I am glad you are beginning to think better of me," she answered quietly.
"Beginning! I have not the shadow of a thought that wrongs you. I am humbled in the dust under your feet. I ask for nothing but to be forgiven, to be restored to your friendship, to help you as a friend, brother, father might help you, in any difficulty, in any trouble."
"Thank you," she said quietly, holding out her hand to him; and their hands met in a firm and lingering grasp, which meant something more than everyday friendliness.
"I am very glad you trust me, in the face of that odious rumour," she said. "I confess that I felt your unkindness—for it was unkind to hold yourself aloof like other people whose friendship I had never particularly valued. As to their preposterous story about me, it would be easy to answer it with an alibi, since I was at my villa on the Italian Riviera from November to April, and have not seen Colonel Rannock since the last Goodwood, when we were both in Lady Carlaverock's house party."
They walked up and down the little avenue of limes till the golden light took a rosier glow and shone upon a lower level, and until Lady Perivale's servants thought she had gone home in somebody else's carriage, and forgotten that her own was waiting for her.
She told Haldane all that had happened to her since her return to London—her indignation, her contempt for her false friends, Lady Morningside's kindness, her engagement of Faunce, the detective, and her hope that she would be able to refute the slander in a court of law.
"Everybody in London has seen my disgrace, and everybody in London must know of my rehabilitation," she said; and then, in a contemptuous tone, "Is it not absurd that I must take all this trouble simply because another woman happens to be like me?"
"And because a man happens to be a villain. I believe the thing was a deep-laid scheme of Rannock's."
"But why should he do such a vile thing?"