His face had turned a dull red, and, as if not knowing what he was doing, his hands began nervously drumming on the table before him.
“Lucy Warren says the person you were with was a stranger to her,” added Jean slowly, and she saw a look of intense relief flash over his worn face.
“Well, my dear,” he said gently, “what is it you wish to ask me?”
“I want to know,” she said in a trembling voice, “whether what she says is true.”
Before he spoke she knew from the look on his face what his answer, if he spoke the truth, must be. And her heart was contracted, for the first time in her life, with a passion of anguished jealousy.
She looked at him fixedly, and something of what she was feeling showed in her set face and wide-open eyes.
At last he said slowly, as if the words were indeed being dragged out of him:
“Yes, it is quite true that I was there twice at night, and with a woman. But the fact has nothing remotely to do with my forthcoming trial for murder. So you must not ask me who the woman was, Jean. It would be most unfair to drag her into this terrible business of mine. I am sure you will understand that?”
He was looking at her straightly, but speaking with obvious embarrassment and unease.
“Of course I was a fool to do a thing so likely to cause poisonous gossip,” he went on. “But you will believe me when I tell you, before God, that it was not my fault. There are certain things concerning his past life that no man has the right to reveal, even to his nearest and dearest.”