He laughed. “I fear we all do that at times, Barbara. What is it?”
He had seated himself in one of Barbara’s favorite low chairs, and she stood before him, leaning on his shoulder, her face a little behind, so that he could not see it. In her delicacy she would not look at him while she spoke what she was going to speak.
“It is something that I have had upon my mind for years, and I did not like to tell it to you.”
“For years?”
“You remember that night, years ago, when Richard was at the Grove in disguise—”
“Which night, Barbara? He came more than once.”
“The night—the night that Lady Isabel quitted East Lynne,” she answered, not knowing how better to bring it to his recollection and she stole her hand lovingly into his, as she said it. “Richard came back after his departure, saying he had met Thorn in Bean lane. He described the peculiar motion of the hand as he threw back his hair from his brow; he spoke of the white hand and the diamond ring—how it glittered in the moonlight. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“The motion appeared perfectly familiar to me, for I had seen it repeatedly used by one then staying at East Lynne. I wondered you did not recognize it. From that night I had little doubt as to the identity of Thorn. I believed that he and Captain Levison were one.”
A pause. “Why did you not tell me so, Barbara?”