“And I cannot see why you should deny it now.  Or if anything has caused you to change your mind—­to be sorry for what you said, why should I not know it?  Even a petty thief may be heard in his own defence.  I loved you because I believed you to be a woman, a great, strong, noble, man’s woman, above little things, above the little, niggling, contemptible devices of the drawing-room.  I loved you because the great things of the world interested you, because you had no place in your life for petty graces, petty affectations, petty deceits and shams and insincerities.  If you did not love me, why did you say so?  If you do love me now, why should you not admit it?  Do you think you can play with me?  Do you think you can coquette with me?  If you were small enough to stoop to such means, do you think I am small enough to submit to them?  I have known Ferriss too well.  I know him to be incapable of such falsity as you would charge him with.  To have told such a lie, such an uncalled-for, useless, gratuitous lie, is a thing he could not have done.  You must have told him that you cared.  Why aren’t you—­you of all women—­brave enough, strong enough, big enough to stand by your words?”

“Because I never said them.  What do you think of me?  Even if I did care, do you suppose I would say as much—­and to another man?  Oh!” she exclaimed with sudden indignation, “let’s talk of something else.  This is too—­preposterous.”

“You never told Ferriss that you cared for me?”

“No.”

Bennett took off his cap.  “Very well, then.  That is enough.  Good-bye, Miss Searight.”

“Do you believe I told Mr. Ferriss I loved you?”

“I do not believe that the man who has been more to me than a brother is a liar and a rascal.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Bennett.”

They had come rather near to the farmhouse by this time.  Without another word Bennett gave the whip and the lap-robe into her hands, and, turning upon his heel, walked away down the road.

Lloyd told Lewis as much of the morning’s accident by the canal as was necessary, and gave orders about the dog-cart and the burying of Rox.  Then slowly, her eyes fixed and wide, she went up to her own room and, without removing either her hat or her gloves, sat down upon the edge of the bed, letting her hands fall limply into her lap, gazing abstractedly at the white curtain just stirring at the open window.

She could not say which hurt her most—­that Ferriss had told the lie or that Bennett believed it.  But why, in heaven’s name why, had Ferriss so spoken to Bennett; what object had he in view; what had he to gain by it?  Why had Ferriss, the man who loved her, chosen so to humiliate her, to put her in a position so galling to her pride, her dignity?  Bennett, too, loved her.  How could he believe that she had so demeaned herself?

She had been hurt and to the heart, at a point where she believed herself most unassailable, and he who held the weapon was the man that with all the heart of her and soul of her she loved.