‘I do not believe it,’ she replied decisively; ‘nor would he have believed it, if what you have told me had been made known to him in time.’
‘I am grateful to you,’ said Mr Hadleigh, bending his head; ‘but I perceive you do not know Mr Shield. Time and solitude alter most men, and they must have had a peculiar effect upon him to have enabled him to make such a deep impression on you. He used to be obstinate to the last degree, and once he had formed an opinion, he held to it in spite of reason.’
‘He must be changed indeed, then, Mr Hadleigh. I am sure that when he had had time to think, he would have understood it all but’——
She paused; and his keen eyes rested searchingly on her troubled face.
‘I know what you would say, and I see that you have doubted me. Ah well, ah well; it is a pity; but that, too, shall be made clear to you, I trust.’
She looked up again hopefully.
‘Oh, if you will do that!’ The tone was like that of an appeal.
‘It can be done, I think.... You have been told that it was I who, in my enmity to Shield, took advantage of his long absence and silence to set abroad the report that he was married. I did not. The story was on the tongue of everybody hereabouts for months, and I, like the rest, believed it. There are only two men who would have said that I spoke the falsehood—the one is the man who invented it; the other is Shield himself.’
‘You knew the man?’
‘I did.’