"No, no, no!" she shrieked aloud. "I swear it to you, Everard! I am guiltless! By all my hopes of heaven, I am your true, your faithful, your loving wife!"
He turned and looked up at her in white amaze. Truth, that no living being could doubt, was stamped in agony on that upturned, beautiful face.
"Hear me, Everard!" she cried—"my own beloved husband! I met this man to-night because he holds a secret I am sworn to keep, and that places me in his power. But, by all that is high and holy, I have told you the simple truth about him! I never saw him in all my life until I saw him that day in the library. I have never set eyes on him since, except for an hour to-night. Oh, believe me, Everard or I shall die here at your feet!"
"And you never wrote to him?" he asked.
"Never—never!"
"Nor he to you?"
"Once—the scrawl you saw Sybilla Silver fetch me. I never wrote—I never sent him even a message."
"No? How, then, came you two to meet to-night?"
"He wished to see me—to extort money from me for the keeping of this secret—and he sent word by Sybilla Silver. My answer was, 'I will be in the Beech Walk at eight tonight. If he wishes to see me let him come to me there.'"
"Then you own to have deliberately deceived me? The pretended headache was—a lie?"