“There!” she cried in amazement, raising herself upright.
“There! more or less. I thought you must have seen me when you came out as you did, with a bounce, not like you. I was, I am ashamed to tell you, like a wretched spy, on the other side of the road, watching where you had gone.”
She turned her face to him with such a look of wide-eyed astonishment that his countenance fell. “I have to beg your pardon, Evelyn. Hear my story first, and then you can say what you please. I was just wild with disappointment and misery when I found you gone. Then—it was on a hint—I guessed where you were. I got up to London on Friday morning—was it only yesterday?—and they told me at the hotel you had just gone out, that if I followed you—. I did follow you, and came up to you. But I couldn’t speak to you. How could I ask an account from my wife of where she was going, or tell her I had followed her? I just followed still, and then I saw that you went in, and guessed that you had an interview upstairs, and then an interview downstairs. And then—Well, when we both got back to the hotel I was more certain than ever that I could not show that I was spying upon you, Evelyn, and was ashamed even to say that I wondered what you were doing. I knew whose house it was, by instinct I suppose. And then, Eddy came to you in the afternoon. And I could think of nothing else but that—when I thought you had been occupied about my boy, it was this other boy that was filling your mind. And then you came back, and I with you in the next carriage, though you never saw me. And then to my wonder and astonishment I watched you come here. So that when you said you had seen the man who—committed that forgery—I knew at once who it was.”
Rowland concluded his narrative with his head bent down, the words coming slowly from his lips. He did not meet the eyes which he felt sure must be full of wrath, and every moment he feared that the hand which held his (his own had become too limp with alarm to hold anything) should drop it, or fling it away in indignation. Evelyn held it tight, giving it a fierce little pressure from time to time. No doubt presently she would fling it from her. And there was a silence which was awful to the penitent.
“I never,” she said at last, “could have recognised you in the rôle of a detective, James.”
“No,” he said, with a furtive glance at her, slightly encouraged by the sound of her voice, though doubtful that the tightness with which she held his hand was preliminary to the sudden tossing away from her, which he expected and feared. “No, it is not exactly my kind of way.”
“But I recognise you,” she said, “very well, when you were not able to say to your wife that you suspected her, when you were ashamed to let me know that you wondered what I was doing. Of what did you suspect me, James?”
She did not loose his hand, but he freed it unconsciously, rising to his feet in overwhelming agitation at this question. Of what did he suspect her? Good heavens! Rowland’s forehead grew cold and wet, his eyes rose, troubled, to meet those with which she was regarding him—large, clear, wide open. It was cruel of Evelyn: the man was so intimidated that he could scarcely reply, though indeed he had been all the time dans son droit.
“I—did not suspect you of anything. Tut!” he said, recovering himself, “why shouldn’t I say the worst? I suspected you of going to consult that man about your husband’s affairs.”
“Did you indeed, James? You supposed I was going to consult a man—of whom I have a right to think everything that is worst in a woman’s eyes, whom I neither trust, nor esteem, nor believe a word that he says—upon the concerns of my honourable husband, which are my concerns, and more than mine, just so much more than mine that I am trusted with them? You could suppose that, James?”