Robert raises a bloodless face and stares stupidly at his brother-in-law.
"I—I don't understand. What can she mean? For Heaven's sake, Armstrong, can't you speak? 'I am going to him who has brought this—this ruin on me.' She—she must be mad—stark staring mad! Whom—whom does she mean? Tom, Tom, for Heaven's sake, tell me!"
"She means that she has gone to the man," says Armstrong, with contemptuous sternness, "whom you forced her to jilt in order to marry me."
The boy's expression of bewilderment is so genuine as to impress him for a moment.
"The man we forced her to jilt to marry you! The mystery thickens. She jilted no man to marry you, Armstrong; I'll swear it on the Bible, if you like. You were the only man who ever asked her in marriage; there was no one else—we knew no one, she went nowhere. You must be mad yourself to say such a thing!"
"There was not this cousin—Edward Lefroy—the casual mention of whose name disturbed her so much a few evenings ago that she had to leave the room in your very presence?"
"Edward Lefroy—Teddy Lefroy!" he retorts impatiently. "Why, he was only a boy, a schoolboy, whom we looked on as a brother, whom—whom Addie has not met since she was a child! Teddy Lefroy? Your suspicion is absurd, below contempt, Armstrong! I—I am ashamed of you!"
Armstrong only smiles very bitterly.
"You will not think my suspicions below contempt when I tell you, my boy, that I myself saw your sister a few evenings ago crying in this man's arms, bemoaning her fate, struggling weakly against the temptation into which she has now fallen, urging—"
"You saw her—you saw her, you heard her! Armstrong, I don't believe you!" he bursts out impulsively. "I don't believe you! You were dreaming, drunk—"