and he had not done so. He might have
taken her child from her: at least he might have made her life miserable
with fears of losing her child: and he had not done so. If indeed it was
true that he had known where she was all the time and had never done
anything to disturb her, what did that mean? This thought gave Elinor
perhaps the first sense of self-reproach and guilt that she had ever
known towards this man, who was her husband, yet whom she had not seen
for more than eighteen years.

And then there was another thing. After that interval he was not afraid
to put himself into her hands--to trust to her loyalty for his
salvation. He knew that she could betray him--and he knew equally well
that she would not do so, notwithstanding the eighteen years of
estrangement and mutual wrong that lay between. It did not matter that
the loyalty he felt sure of would be a false loyalty, an upholding of
what was not true. He would think little of that, as likely as not he
had forgotten all about that. He would know that her testimony would
clear him, and he would not think of anything else; and even did he
think of it the fact of a woman making a little mis-statement like that
would never have affected Philip. But the strange thing was that he had
no fear she would revenge herself by standing up against him--no doubt
of her response to his appeal; he was as ready to put his fate in her
hands as if she had been the most devoted of wives--his constant
companion and champion. This had the most curious effect upon her mind,
almost greater than the other. She had shown no faith in him, but he had
faith in her. Reckless and guilty as he was, he had not doubted her. He
had put it in her power to convict him not only of the worst accusation
that was brought against him, but of a monstrous trick to prove his
_alibi_, and a cruel wrong to her compelling her to uphold that as true.
She was able to expose him, if she chose, as no one else could do; but
he had not been afraid of that. This second thought, which burst upon
Elinor without any volition of her own, had the most curious effect
upon her. She abstained carefully, anxiously, from allowing herself
to be drawn into making any conclusion from these darts of unintended
thoughts. But they moved her in spite of herself. They made her think of
him, which she had for a long time abstained from doing. She had shut
her heart for years from any recollection of her husband, trying to
ignore his e