How did he know of this?  But that thought came to her only to pass.  She understood at length the whole extent of his suspicion.  It was not only her secret feelings that he called in question, he accused her of actual dishonour as it is defined by the world—­that clumsy world with its topsy-turvydom of moral judgments.  To have this certainty flashed upon her was, as soon as she had recovered from the shock, a sensible assuagement of her misery.  In face of this she could stand her ground.  Her womanhood was in arms; she faced him scornfully.

‘Will you please to make plain your charge against me?’

’I think it’s plain enough.  If a married woman makes appointments in quiet places with a man she has no business to see anywhere, what’s that called?  I fancy I’ve seen something of that kind before now in cases before the Divorce Court.’

It angered him that she was not overwhelmed.  He saw that she did not mean to deny having met Eldon, and to have Alice’s story thus confirmed inflamed his jealousy beyond endurance.

‘You must believe of me what you like,’ Adela replied in a slow, subdued voice.  ’My word would be vain against that of my accuser, whoever it is.’

’Your accuser, as you say, happened not only to see you, but to hear you talking.’

He waited for her surrender before this evidence.  Instead of that Adela smiled.

’If my words were reported to you, what fault have you to find with me?’

Her confidence, together with his actual ignorance of what Rodman had heard, troubled him with doubt.

‘Answer this question,’ he said.  ’Did you make an appointment with that man?’

‘I did not.’

‘You did not?  Yet you met him?’

‘Unexpectedly.’

‘But you talked with him?’

‘How can you ask?  You know that I did.’

He collected his thoughts.

‘Repeat to me what you talked about.’

‘That I refuse to do.’

‘Of course you do!’ he cried, driven to frenzy.  ’And you think I shall let this rest where it is?  Have you forgotten that I came to the Westlakes and found Eldon there with you?  And what was he doing in this street this morning if he hadn’t come to see you?  I begin to understand why you were so precious eager about giving up the will.  That was your fine sense of honesty, of course!  You are full of fine senses, but your mistake is to think I’ve no sense at all.  What do you take me for?’

The thin crust of refinement was shattered; the very man came to light, coarse, violent, whipped into fury by his passions, of which injured self-love was not the least.  Whether he believed his wife guilty or not he could not have said; enough that she had kept things secret from him, and that he could not overawe her.  Whensoever he had shown anger in conversation with her, she had made him sensible of her superiority; at length he fell back upon his brute