"I say, if you could only have seen their faces--"
"Do you mean to say that you have told this story to anyone?"
"I was constrained to state my reasons for giving such a promise to the landlord of 'The Rose and Crown.'"
"I hardly know if I ought not to strike you, Arthur Pettifer."
"My lord!"
"I hardly know if I ought not to pillory you in the market-place, and so compel you to do penance for your slanderous tongue. I have long been conscious of a certain pharisaical narrowness in your mental and in your moral outlook. I have seen in you what has seemed to me a hideous tendency to think the worst both of women and of men. But I never thought you capable of such gross obliquity of judgment as you yourself appear now to own to. Is it possible that you believed that such a story as you have told me could be true?"
The Dean had turned quite pale. He seemed to speak beneath his breath.
"Is it possible that Boulter lied?"
"Is it possible, Arthur Pettifer, that you could believe that I--I, Ralph Ingall, with whose life's history you are as well acquainted almost as myself--could so perjure myself that, as God's minister, in God's house, I could pledge myself never again to let alcohol pass my lips in any shape or form, and that then, with that pledge still warm upon my lips, I could pass straight into a pot-house and stupefy myself with wine?"
"Was it--was it Budgen, then?"