This brief explanation was quite enough for me—I understood what had happened. Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about my absence from the hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin would be persuaded without difficulty to repeat the few words which had passed between us on the subject of Major Fitz-David. My husband’s presence in the Major’s house was perfectly explained. But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room at the very time when I was just recovering my senses still remained to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David looked seriously embarrassed when I put the question to him.
“I hardly know how to explain it to you,” he said. “Eustace has surprised and disappointed me.”
He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words: his looks alarmed me.
“Eustace has not quarreled with you?” I said.
“Oh no!”
“He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?”
“Certainly. My young vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor exactly what had happened; and the doctor in her presence repeated the statement to your husband.”
“Did the doctor see the Trial?”
“Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the Trial. I have locked it up; and I have carefully kept the terrible story of your connection with the prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr. Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. But the doctor has no idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of your fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious nervous attacks, and that your husband’s name is really Woodville. All that the truest friend could do to spare Eustace I have done. He persists, nevertheless, in blaming me for letting you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he persists in declaring the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from him. ‘There is an end of our married life,’ he said to me, ‘now she knows that I am the man who was tried at Edinburgh for poisoning my wife!”’
I rose from the sofa in horror.