rt, one hand clenched on the letter.

_"I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr.
Amherst."_

That was what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail
all this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of
consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear;
and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look
back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it,
after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"--the ghost of the opinion
of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her
having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings--returning to
the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have
guessed what had happened; and his silence had made her believe that he
understood her motive and approved it. But, supposing she had been
mistaken, she still had nothing to fear, since she had done nothing that
her own conscience condemned. If the act were to do again she would do
it--she had never known a moment's regret!

Suddenly she heard Amherst's step in the passage--heard him laughing and
talking as he chased Cicely up the stairs to the nursery.

_If she was not afraid, why had she never told Amherst?_

Why, the answer to that was simple enough! She had not told him _because
she was not afraid_. From the first she had retained sufficient
detachment to view her act impartially, to find it completely justified
by circumstances, and to decide that, since those circumstances could be
but partly and indirectly known to her husband, she not only had the
right to keep her own counsel, but was actually under a kind of
obligation not to force on him the knowledge of a fact that he could not
alter and could not completely judge.... Was there any flaw in this line
of reasoning? Did it not show a deliberate weighing of conditions, a
perfect rectitude of intention? And, after all, she had had Amherst's
virtual consent to her act! She knew his feelings on such matters--his
independence of traditional judgments, his horror of inflicting needless
pain--she was as sure of his intellectual assent as of her own. She was
even sure that, when she told him, he would appreciate her reasons for
not telling him before....

For now of course he must know everything--this horrible letter made it
inevitable. She regretted that she had decided, though for the best of
reasons, not to speak to him