h 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 force and resolved to bring her to
his feet, if need be by outrage. Even his accent deteriorated as he
flung out his passionate words; he spoke like any London mechanic, with
defect and excess of aspirates, with neglect of g's at the end of words,
and so on. Adela could not bear it; she moved to the door. But he caught
her and thrust her back; it was all