"You know I told you—when we had that talk in London—that I wanted to write. I thought it would be good for me—would take my thoughts off—well, what had happened. And I began to write this—and it amused me to find I could do it—and I suppose I got carried away. I loved describing you, and glorifying you—and I loved making caricatures of Lady Parham—and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever you were away—or I was dull and there was nothing to do.
"Did it never occur to you," said Ashe, interrupting, "that it might get you—get us both—into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?"
She wavered.
"No!" she said, at last. "I never did mean to tell you, while I was writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was afraid you'd stop it."
"Good God!" He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.
"But then"—she resumed—"I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it was funny—and everybody would laugh—and you'd laugh—and there would be an end of it."
He turned and stared at her. "Frankly, Kitty—I don't understand what you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham"—he struck the open page—"a sketch written by my wife, describing my official chief—when he was my guest—under my own roof—with all sorts of details of the most intimate and offensive kind—mocking his speech—his manners—his little personal ways—charging him with being the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not to be trusted—and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess—you actually supposed that you could write and publish that!—without in the first place its being plain to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that you had written it—and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!—you are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without knowing that you were doing a wrong action—which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably? Did nothing—did no one warn you—if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?"
He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair—stooping forward to emphasize his words—the lines of his fine face and noble brow contracted by anger and pain.
"Mr. Darrell warned me," said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her—"but of course I didn't believe him."
"Darrell!" cried Ashe, in amazement—"Darrell! You confided in him?"