“I deny that he did, Geoffrey,” she cried fiercely, starting up. “To satisfy you, I am even ready to take an oath before my Creator that the subject of our conversation was not love.”
“What was Beck persuading you to do?” I demanded.
“No, no,” she cried, as if the very thought was repulsive to her. “No, do not ask me. I can never tell you, never!”
“Then there is a secret between you that you decline to reveal,” I said reproachfully.
She laughed a harsh metallic laugh, answering in a tone of feigned flippancy,—
“Really, Geoffrey, you are absurdly and unreasonably suspicious. I tell you I love no other man but yourself, yet merely because it pleases you to misconstrue what you have witnessed you brand me as base and faithless. It is unjust.”
“But your letter!” I cried.
“I had no intention of conveying the idea that any secret existed between Mr Beck and myself. He was, as you well know, an old friend of my father’s, and has known me since a child. Towards me he is always friendly and good-natured, but I swear he has never spoken to me of love.”
“But you cannot deny, Ella, that a secret—some fact that you are determined to keep from me—exists, and that if not of love, it was of that secret Beck spoke to you so earnestly in the garden here!”
Her dry lips moved, but no sound escaped them. She shivered. I saw my question had entirely nonplussed her, and I felt instinctively that I had uttered the truth.