He was once more scrutinising her.  The suspicion was a genuine one, and involved even more than Adela could imagine.  If there had been a plot, such plot assuredly included the discoverer of the document.  Could he in his heart charge Adela with that?  There were two voices at his ear, and of equal persuasiveness.  Even to look into her face did not silence the calumnious whispering.  Her beauty was fuel to his jealousy, and his jealousy alone made the supposition of her guilt for a moment tenable.  It was on his lips to accuse her, to ease himself with savage innuendoes, those ’easy things to understand’ which come naturally from such a man in such a situation.  But to do that would be to break with her for ever, and the voice that urged her innocence would not let him incur such risk.  The loss of his possessions was a calamity so great that as yet he could not realise its possibility; the loss of his wife impressed his imagination more immediately, and was in this moment the more active fear.

He was in the strange position of a man who finds all at once that he dare not believe that which he has been trying his best to believe.  If Adela were guilty of plotting with Eldon, it meant that he himself was the object of her utter hatred, a hideous thought to entertain.  It threw him back upon her innocence.  Egoism had to do the work of the finer moral perceptions.

‘Isn’t it rather strange,’ he said, not this time sneeringly, but seeking for support against his intolerable suspicions, ’that you never moved those buffets before?’

‘I never had need of them.’

‘And that hole has never been cleaned out?’

‘Never; clearly never.’

She had risen to her feet, impelled by a glimmering of the thought in which he examined her.  What she next said came from her without premeditation.  Her tongue seemed to speak independently of her will.

’One thing I have said that was not true.  It was not money that slipped down, but my ring.  I had taken it off and laid it on the Prayer-book.’

‘Your ring?’ he repeated, with cold surprise.  ’Do you always take your ring off in church, then?’

As soon as the words were spoken she had gone deadly pale.  Was it well to say that?  Must there follow yet more explanation?  She with difficulty overcame an impulse to speak on and disclose all her mind, the same kind of impulse she had known several times of late.  Sheer dread this time prevailed.  The eyes that were upon her concealed fire; what madness tempted her to provoke its outburst?

‘I have never done so before,’ she replied confusedly.

‘Why to-day, then?’

She did not answer.

‘And why did you tell—­why did you say it was money?’

‘I can’t explain that,’ she answered, her head bowed.  ’I took off the ring thoughtlessly; it is rather loose; my finger is thinner than it used to be.’