"I told you I wished I didn't. The evidence is too clear."
"You haven't told me that you believe it is true. You can't get beyond the fact that there's ugly gossip going round and that I'm in love with him. If you thought this was your dying oath, that heaven depended upon the truth of your statement, can you say that in your soul you believe that Michael has taken this woman with him, that he is utterly treacherous and faithless? Does your unconquerable voice condemn him?"
Freddy thought for a moment. "It looks very black, Meg. The evidence is very convincing."
"Confound the evidence!" she said. "That is not an answer. I asked you, does your inner self, your super-man, believe absolutely in his guilt?" Meg was staring at him with hard, questioning eyes; all trace of her love for him had been driven out.
"Well no, if you put it like that, perhaps not. But I can't have your name connected with these stories."
"My name?" she cried. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that our women have married straight, clean, honourable men."
"The Lamptons again!" she said. "Am I never to be free from tradition? Just because I'm a Lampton, I am to behave in a mean, disloyal manner to the man I swore to trust? Do you suppose I'm going to? If you do, you're much mistaken. In my own heart I've been Michael's wife for weeks and weeks, so you needn't imagine I'm going to divorce him."
"But I do, Meg." Freddy rose from the table. "Now, look here," he said, "try to speak dispassionately. How can I, as your sole male guardian, countenance an engagement between you and Michael while there is only too much ground for belief that this story is true? I've not only heard it from the natives."
"You're wholly without reason. You just said you didn't believe it!"
The words flashed from Meg's lips like the fire from a gun.