Thelma colored deeply. "I would not question my husband on such a subject," she said proudly.
"Oh well! if you are so fastidious!" And Lady Winsleigh shrugged her shoulders.
"I am not fastidious," returned Thelma, "only I do wish to be worthy of his love,—and I should not be so if I doubted him. No, Clara, I will trust him to the end."
Clara Winsleigh drew nearer to her, and took her hand.
"Even if he were unfaithful to you?" she asked in a low, impressive tone.
"Unfaithful!" Thelma uttered the word with a little cry. "Clara, dear Clara, you must not say such a word! Unfaithful! That means that my husband would love some one more than me!—ah! that is impossible!"
"Suppose it were possible?" persisted Lady Winsleigh, with a cruel light in her dark eyes. "Such things have been!"
Thelma stood motionless, a deeply mournful expression on her fair, pale face. She seemed to think for a moment, then she spoke.
"I would never believe it!" she said solemnly. "Never, unless I heard it from his own lips, or saw it in his own writing, that he was weary of me, and wanted me no more."
"And then?"