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.'

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 wit