"Because," said she, "I am the woman you have been talking about."
For an instant they sat perfectly motionless, the three of them. Then slowly Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned their heads and looked at each other, as if to verify what they had heard. Mr. Burke put out his hand toward Bessie Lonsdale's arm, resting on the table, and he spoke very gently indeed:
"My dear Mrs. Lonsdale, this is impossible."
"Impossible," she said, passing her hand across her eyes, "impossible?"
"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale." He spoke reasonably, as if she were a child. "It couldn't be you." He turned now to include Mr. Ford, who sat staring at them both. "I myself gave Mrs. Lonsdale the news of Mr. Ayling's death, over the telephone. She was at her home, in Cambridge Terrace, quietly having tea with a friend; the friend was still there when I arrived. You have been at home, in London, all day."
"No," she said. "No, Mr. Burke."
"I think," said Mr. Ford, also very gently indeed, "that perhaps Mrs. Lonsdale is trying to shield some one."
Until that instant Bessie Lonsdale had no plan. She had only known that she could not go with them to Homebury St. Mary, there to be recognized. But something in the suggestion of Mr. Ford—in the tone, perhaps, more than the words—caused her to say, looking from one to the other of these two men so lately strangers to her:
"I wonder—I wonder if I could make you understand!"
They begged her to believe that that was the thing they wished most to do.