ries, but
they don't know what has weight and what has not, and they refuse to
weigh them because they cannot weigh anything. Their minds, quickly
confused at the best of times, instinctively select and retain all they
remember that upholds their own view of the situation and--discard the
rest.

Fay could not answer Magdalen's trenchant question. She could only
restate her own view of her husband's character.

Magdalen did not make large demands on the truthfulness of others if
they had very little of it. She did not repeat her question. She waited
a moment, and then said:

"You seem to think that Andrea never guessed the attachment between
yourself and Michael. But he must have done so. And if he had not
guessed it till Michael was found in your rooms, at any rate he knew it
_then_--for certain. _For certain_, Fay. Remember that is settled. There
was no other possible explanation of Michael's presence there, if you
bar the murder explanation, which is barred as far as Andrea is
concerned. Now from first to last Andrea retained his respect for
Michael and his belief in your innocence in circumstances which would
have ruined you in the eyes of most husbands. You say Andrea did not
understand you or do you justice. On the contrary, it seems to me he
acted towards you with great nobility and delicacy."

Fay was vaguely troubled. Her deep, long-fostered dislike of her husband
must not be shaken in this way. She could not endure to have any
fixtures in her mind displaced. So much depended on keeping the whole
tightly wedged fabric in position.

"You don't know what cruel words he said to me on his deathbed," she
said. "I don't call it nobility and delicacy never to give me the least
hint till the day he died that he knew why Michael was in prison."

"Perhaps he hoped--hoped against hope--that----" Magdalen did not finish
her sentence. She fixed her eyes on Fay's. A great love shone in them,
and a great longing. Then, with a kind of withdrawal into herself, she
went on. "Andrea was loyal to you to the last. He went away without a
word to anyone except, it seems, to you. I always liked him, but I see
now that I never did him justice. I did not know with his Italian
hereditary distrust of woman's honour that he could have risen to such a
height as that. Think of it, Fay. What grovelling and sordid suspicions
he might have had of you, must inevitably have had of you and Michael if
he had not followed a very noble instinct