She was perpetually thinking now; she lay there weaving long chains of reasoning from the flowers of her innocent fancy, chains so brittle and insubstantial, they would have offered no support to any creature less light than she.  If Tyson was more than usually sulky, that was the serious side of him coming out; if he was silent, well, everybody knows that the deepest feelings are seldom expressed in words; if he was atrociously irritable, it was no wonder, considering the strain he had undergone, poor fellow.  She reminded herself how he had cried over her like a child; she rehearsed that other scene of confession and forgiveness—­the tender, sacred words, the promises and vows.  Already the New Life was passing into the life of memory, while she told herself that it could not pass.  It takes so much to make a strong man cry, you know.  When doubts came, she always fell back on the argument from tears.

He was reading to her one evening after she had gone tired to bed (reading was so much easier than talking), when Mrs. Nevill Tyson, whose attention wandered dreadfully, interrupted him.

“Nevill—­you remember that night when the accident happened?  I mean—­just before the fire?”

He moaned out an incoherent assent.

“And you remember what you thought?”

His only answer was a nervous movement of his feet.

“Well, I’ve often wanted to tell you about that.  I know you didn’t really think there was anything between me and Louis, but—­”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“I know—­really.  Still it might have made a difference.  I would have told you all about it that night, if it hadn’t been for that beastly fire.  You know mother said I was awfully silly—­I laid myself open to all sorts of dreadful things.  She said I ought to have left London—­that time.  I couldn’t.  I knew when you came back you would come right here—­I might have missed you.  Besides, it would have been horrible to go back to Thorneytoft, where everybody was talking and thinking things.  They would talk, Nevill.”

“The fiends!  You shouldn’t have minded them, darling.  They didn’t understand you.  How could they?  The brutes.”

“Me?  Oh, I wouldn’t have minded that.”

Tyson was frankly astonished.  Apparently she had not a notion that she had been the subject of any scurrilous reports at Drayton Parva or elsewhere.  From the first she had resented their social ostracism (when she became aware of it) as an insult to him; and now, evidently she had found the clue to the mysterious scandal in her knowledge of his conduct.  Before she could do that, in her own mind she must have accused him gravely.  And yet, but for this characteristic little inadvertence, he would never have known it.  How much did she know?