He found Adela engaged in cooking the dinner; she wore an apron, and the sleeves of her dress were pushed up.  As he came into the room she looked at him with her patient smile; finding that he was in one of his worst tempers, she said nothing and went on with her work.  A coarse cloth was thrown over the table; on it lay a bowl of vegetables which she was preparing for the saucepan.

Perhaps it was the sight of her occupation, of the cheerful simplicity with which she addressed herself to work so unworthy of her; he could not speak at once as he had meant to.  He examined her with eyes of angry, half foiled suspicion.  She had occasion to pass him; he caught her arm and stayed her before him.

‘What has Eldon been doing here?’

She paused and shrank a little.

‘Mr. Eldon has not been here.’

He thought her face betrayed a guilty agitation.

’I happen to have met him going away.  I think you’d better tell me the truth.’

’I have told you the truth.  If Mr. Eldon has been to the house, I was not aware of it.’

He looked at her in silence for a moment, then asked: 

‘Are you the greatest hypocrite living?’

Adela drew farther away.  She kept her eyes down.  Long ago she had suspected what was in Mutimer’s mind, but she had only been apprehensive of the results of jealousy on his temper and on their relations to each other; it had not entered her thought that she might have to defend herself against an accusation.  This violent question affected her strangely.  For a moment she referred it entirely to the secrets of her heart, and it seemed impossible to deny what was imputed to her, impossible even to resent his way of speaking.  Was she not a hypocrite?  Had she not many, many times concealed with look and voice an inward state which was equivalent to infidelity?  Was not her whole life a pretence, an affectation of wifely virtues?  But the hypocrisy was involuntary; her nature had no power to extirpate its causes and put in their place the perfect dignity of uprightness.

‘Why do you ask me that?’ she said at length, raising her eyes for an instant.

’Because it seems to me I’ve good cause.  I don’t know whether to believe a word you say.’

‘I can’t remember to have told you falsehoods.’  Her cheeks flushed.  ‘Yes, one; that I confessed to you.’

It brought to his mind the story of the wedding ring.

’There’s such a thing as lying when you tell the truth.  Do you remember that I met you coming back to the Manor that Monday afternoon, a month ago, and asked you where you’d been?’

Her heart stood still.

‘Answer me, will you?’

‘I remember it.’

’You told me you’d been for a walk in the wood.  You forgot to say who it was you went to meet.’