“I do not presume to judge of your motives,” he replied; “I go only upon facts.”
If she had not been very much flurried, she would have abstained from the question she now put.
“What facts?”
“Since you force me into incivility,” he answered, with grave sadness, “I must remind you that ten days ago you told an elaborate falsehood, or rather series of falsehoods, to disguise the fact that you had spent the afternoon of my wife’s absence in London, in motoring to Tennington.”
Here was a facer. Yet it did not produce the effect he expected, and in an instant he realized that she had been aware of his knowledge all along.
“So that is why you have been so cruel to me all this weary time?” she cried, astute in softness, and trying with nice strategy to turn a position which it was quite impossible to face.
A suspicious tendency to grow lenient, recognized in time and rebutted, hardened his voice.
“You do not deny it?”
“Why should I?”—her look taking a surprised unbraiding. “I meant no harm! I only did it because I was afraid of giving pain to either of you. I knew that you did not approve of Lady Tennington; and yet”—anxiously watching to see the good effect of the next utterance—“I could not bear to neglect an old friend who is down in the world.”
She had so deftly changed the ground of conflict, and confused the issues, that he could only repeat stupidly—