What was't you said?"

"Some word of surprise, I suppose; something of no meaning."

"Nay, it had meaning, too. I felt that, though I put it aside for the
time. Something about the night--ah, yes: 'to-night of all nights.'
And me of all men. Why so? Why to-night in particular? Why am I the
most inconvenient visitor, and why _to-night_? Tell me that! Tell
me--I have the right to know!"

"Nay, if you work yourself up into a fury so--"

"'Tis no senseless fury, madam! There's reason at the bottom of it, my
lady! I must know, and I will know, what it is that my visit
interferes with. You were not going out, I can see by your dress. Nor
expecting company. Unless--no, it couldn't be that! You're not capable
of that! You are my wife, you are Margaret Faringfield, William
Faringfield's daughter. God forgive the mistrust--yet every husband
with an imagination has tortured himself for an instant sometime with
that thought, suppose his wife's heart _might_ stray? I've heard 'em
confess the thought; and even I--but what a hell it was for the moment
it lasted! And how swiftly I put it from me, to dwell on your
tenderness in the old days, your pride that has put you above the
hopes of all men but me, the unworthy one you chose to reach down your
hand to from your higher level!"

"So you have harboured _that_ suspicion, have you?" she cried, with
flashing eyes.

"No, no; harboured it never! Only let my perverse imagination 'light,
for the space of a breath, on the possibility, to my unutterable
torment. All men's fancies play 'em such tricks now and then, to
torture them and take down their vanity. Men would rest too easy in
their security, were it not so."

"A man that suspects his wife, deserves to lose her allegiance," cried
Margaret, with a kind of triumphant imputation of blame, which was her
betrayal.

He gazed at her with the dawning horror of half-conviction.

"Then I have lost yours?" he asked, in a tone stricken with doubt and
dread.

"I didn't say so," she replied, reddening.

"But your words imply that. You seemed to be justifying yourself by my
suspicion. But there was no suspicion till now--nothing but a
tormenting fancy of what I believed impossible. So you cannot excuse
yourself that way."

"I'm not trying to excuse myself. There's nothing to excuse."

"I'm not sure of that! Your manner looks as if you realised having
said too much--having betrayed yourself. Margaret, for God's sake,
tell me 'tis not