"Proofs?" She stared at him, wide-eyed a moment. Then her lip curled.
"And that no doubt was the reason of your flight when you heard that the
Queen's pursuivants were coming in response to the public voice to call
you to account."

He stood at gaze a moment, utterly dumbfounded. "My flight?" he said.
"What fable's that?"

"You will tell me next that you did not flee. That that is another false
charge against you?"

"So," he said slowly, "it was believed I fled!"

And then light burst upon him, to dazzle and stun him. It was so
inevitably what must have been believed, and yet it had never crossed
his mind. O the damnable simplicity of it! At another time his
disappearance must have provoked comment and investigation, perhaps.
But, happening when it did, the answer to it came promptly and
convincingly and no man troubled to question further. Thus was Lionel's
task made doubly easy, thus was his own guilt made doubly sure in the
eyes of all. His head sank upon his breast. What had he done? Could
he still blame Rosamund for having been convinced by so overwhelming a
piece of evidence? Could he still blame her if she had burnt unopened
the letter which he had sent her by the hand of Pitt? What else indeed
could any suppose, but that he had fled? And that being so, clearly such
a flight must brand him irrefutably for the murderer he was alleged to
be. How could he blame her if she had ultimately been convinced by the
only reasonable assumption possible?

A sudden sense of the wrong he had done rose now like a tide about him.

"My God!" he groaned, like a man in pain. "My God!"

He looked at her, and then averted his glance again, unable now to
endure the haggard, strained yet fearless gaze of those brave eyes of
hers.

"What else, indeed, could you believe?" he muttered brokenly, thus
giving some utterance to what was passing through his mind.

"Naught else but the whole vile truth," she answered fiercely, and
thereby stung him anew, whipped him out of his sudden weakening back to
his mood of resentment and vindictiveness.

She had shown herself, he thought in that moment of reviving anger, too
ready to believe what told against him.

"The truth?" he echoed, and eyed her boldly now. "Do you know the truth
when you see it? We shall discover. For by God's light you shall have
the truth laid stark before you now, and you shall find it hideous
beyond all your hideous imaginings."

There was something so compel