She was actually arguing with him; he shrugged his shoulders with a hopeless gesture.
Then Bella Germaine came quite close up to her husband. She looked at him straight in the eyes.
"I'll tell you," she said. "I see you really don't know. It's—it's——" she hesitated, again a look of shame,—more, of fear,—came into her face, "The person who has been giving me money, Oliver, is Rabbit."
"Rabbit? I don't believe you!"
"You don't believe me?"
Bella drew a long breath. The worst, from her point of view, was now over. She had told the truth,—and Oliver had brushed the truth aside, so possessed by insane jealousy of Peter Joliffe and Bob Uvedale, that he had apparently no room in his heart for anything else.
Bella gave a little sigh of relief. Perhaps, after all, she had made a mistake in being so frightened; men are so queer—perhaps Oliver would feel, as she had now felt for so long, that poor old Rabbit could not find a better use for his money than in making her happy.
She walked over to her pretty desk, and frowned a little as she saw its condition of disarray; the receipted bills which she had found her husband looking over were scattered, even the tradesmen's books had not been put back in their place on the little shelf.
She touched the spring of a rather obvious secret drawer. There had been a time when Bella Germaine had hidden very carefully what she was now about to show Oliver as the certain, triumphant proof that his revolting suspicions were false. But of late she had grown careless.
"If you don't believe me," she said coldly, "look at this, Oliver. I think it will convince you that I told the truth just now."