"A woman may be accurate, you know, in all she says of other people," he observed; "but that is no proof that she will be so concerning herself."
"I know," was my reply; "but I feel quite sure of this lady's word."
"And during the time that you have known her she now confesses that she has suffered more or less?"
"Yes. She mentioned one interval during which she said a new interest in life took her completely out of herself."
"What was the interest?"
"I did not ask her."
"She fell in love, I suppose, and you happened to know the fact."
"I neither know, nor suspected such a thing,"
"That was it, you may be sure," Sir Shadwell decided. "When a young and attractive woman, who speaks to her husband with marked courtesy and consideration, instead of treating him familiarly, talks of having an interest in life which takes her completely out of herself, you may take it for granted almost always that the new interest is love."
"It is more likely to have been the small-pox epidemic," I rejoined, and then I gave him an account of that episode.