"Well!—it was there. Don't read it; burn it! Can't you get it now, and burn it for me to see? I would so much rather."
Challis should have replied that he had got the letter safe somewhere, he knew, and he would look it up after he had finished his half-pipe. The reprobates the story has referred to would have done so; would probably have gone the length of turning out their pockets, slapping themselves on those outworks; would even have said, being men of spirit, Dammy, madam, the Devil was in it if they could tell what had become of the letter! Come what might, they would have cut a figure! Challis cut none, or if he did it was a poor one. The fact is that, considered as a liar, he was good for nothing—had a very low standard of mendacity; and, indeed, had suffered so much over this affair of Judith that it was a luxury to him to say something, at last, without any reserves.
"It's burned already, Polly Anne. So you may be easy. Ta-ta!" He had said it before he remembered how unready he must perforce be with details.
"Oh!" rather curtly. "I suppose you lit your pipe with it? Very well!"
He had better have let misapprehension stand. Better that amount of false construction than the actual facts. But he must needs clear his character. "No, Polly Anne; it was really no fault of mine. It was the merest accident...." He stuttered over it; and she, seeing he had some tale to tell or reserve about it—but, to do her justice, without any idea of a lion in ambush—waited with patience. This, as you know, is the deadliest way in which stammered information can be received.
"It really was—you know how imp ... difficult it is to read by moonlight—and my wax vesta I lit to read it with was the last I had. It was when I threw it away—yes, when I threw it away it set fire to the letter. It burned my fingers, and I threw it on the ground." What a lame business! And he dared not mention Judith, and knew it.
Marianne's voice is changing a little as she repeats: "It burned your fingers, and you threw it on the ground?" She does not use the words "Please explain!" aloud. She merely leaves them unspoken.
But her husband has only begun saying "Yes ..." uneasily, when she cuts him short. "Were they dining by moonlight at Royd last night?"
"No—no—of course not! You don't understand...."
"I don't."