“There was a train from town reaching Ashdridge Station at nine o’clock at night. I took it. I didn’t care to go to Inley Station, where everybody would know me, and wonder what I was up to. I didn’t take any luggage. My man asked if he should pack, and I said ‘No.’ I didn’t dine. I was at Pad-dington three-quarters of an hour before the train was due to start. At last it came in to the platform. Going down I read the evening papers just like any man going home from business. Soon after we got away from London I saw there was rain on the carriage windows. That seemed to me right. We were a little late at Ashdridge. It was still wet, and I had my coat collar turned up. I don’t believe they recognised me there. I set out to walk to Inley.”
“What did you mean to do?”
“I told you before.”
I looked into his face, and believed him. Then I thought of Lady Inley’s childish, delicate beauty, of her slightly affected manner, the manner of a woman who has always been spoilt, whose paths have been made very smooth. And here she was living, apparently happily, with a man who had deliberately travelled down in the night to kill her. How ignorant we are!
“You are condemning me,” Inley said, with a touch of hot anger.
“I was only thinking——”
“Yes?”
“That we don’t know each other much in the greatest intimacy.”
“That’s what I thought then.”
He said that in a way which suddenly put me on his side. He must have seen the change in my feelings, for he went on, with his former unreserve: