failings betrayed me now. The
blush seemed to proclaim my guilt; my sudden understanding of Jervaise's
temper confirmed it.

For, indeed, I understood precisely at that moment how enraged he must be
against me. He, like Miss Tattersall, had been playing an underhand game,
though his was different in kind. He had been seduced (my bitterness
against Anne found satisfaction in laying the blame at her door!) into
betraying the interests of his own family. _I_ did not, in a sense, blame
him for that; I had, the night before, been more than a little inclined to
honour him for it; but I saw how, from the purely Jervaise point of view,
his love-making would appear as something little short of criminal. And to
be caught in the act, for I had caught him, however unwillingly, must have
been horribly humiliating for him. Little wonder that coming home, hot and
ashamed from his rendezvous, and being confronted with all the tale of my
duplicity, he had flamed into a fury of resentment against me. I
understood that beyond any question. Only one point still puzzled me. How
had he been able until this moment to restrain his fury? I could but
suppose that there was something cold-blooded, calculating, almost
reptilian in his character; that he had planned cautiously and
far-sightedly what he regarded as the best means for bringing about my
ultimate disgrace.

And now my blush and my powers of sympathy had betrayed me. I felt like a
convicted criminal as I said feebly, "Oh! that was an accident, absolutely
an accident, I assure you. I had no sort of idea where you were when I
went up to the Home Farm...."

"After keeping an eye on the front of the house all the morning," he put
in viciously.

A sense of awful frustration overcame me. Looking back on the past fifteen
hours, I saw all my actions ranged in a long incriminating series. Each
one separately might be explained, but regarded as a consequent series,
those entirely inconsequent doings of mine could bear but one explanation:
I was for some purpose of my own, whether idiotically romantic or not, on
the side of Banks and Brenda. I had never lifted a finger to help them; I
was not in their confidence; and since the early morning I had withdrawn a
measure of my sympathy from them. But I could not prove any of these
things. I could only affirm them, and this domineering bully, who stood
glowering at me, wanted proof or nothing. He was too well accustomed to
the methods of criminals