Adela drew farther away. She kept her eyes down. Long ago she had suspected what was in Mutimer’s mind, but she had only been apprehensive of the results of jealousy on his temper and on their relations to each other; it had not entered her thought that she might have to defend herself against an accusation. This violent question affected her strangely. For a moment she referred it entirely to the secrets of her heart, and it seemed impossible to deny what was imputed to her, impossible even to resent his way of speaking. Was she not a hypocrite? Had she not many, many times concealed with look and voice an inward state which was equivalent to infidelity? Was not her whole life a pretence, an affectation of wifely virtues? But the hypocrisy was involuntary; her nature had no power to extirpate its causes and put in their place the perfect dignity of uprightness. ‘Why do you ask me that?’ she said at length, raising her eyes for an instant. ‘Because it seems to me I’ve good cause. I don’t know whether to believe a word you say.’ ‘I can’t remember to have told you falsehoods.’ Her cheeks flushed. ‘Yes, one; that I confessed to you.’ It brought to his mind the story of the wedding ring. ‘There’s such a thing as lying when you tell the truth. Do you remember that I met you coming back to the Manor that Monday afternoon, a month ago, and asked you where you’d been?’ Her heart stood still. ‘Answer me, will you?’ ‘I remember it.’ ‘You told me you’d been for a walk in the wood. You forgot to say who it was you went to meet.’ How did he know of this? But that thought came to her only to pass. She understood at length the whole extent of his suspicion. It was not only her secret feelings that he called in question, he accused her of actual dishonour as it is defined by the world--that clumsy world with its topsy-turvydom of moral judgments. To have this certainty flashed upon her was, as soon as she had recovered from the shock, a sensible assuagement of her misery. In face of this she could stand her ground. Her womanhood was in arms; she faced him scornfully. ‘Will you please to make plain your charge against me?’ ‘I think it’s plain enough. If a married woman makes appointments in quiet places with a man she has no business to see anywhere, what’s that called? I fancy I’ve seen something of that kind before now in cases before the Divorce Court.’ It angered him that she was not overwhelmed. He saw that she did not mean to deny having met Eldon, and to have Alice’s story thus confirmed inflamed his jealousy beyond endurance. ‘You must believe of me what you like,’ Adela replied in a slow, subdued voice. ‘My word would be vain against that of my accuser, whoever it is.’ ‘Your accuser, as you say, happened not only to see you, but to hear you talking.’ He waited for her surrender before this evidence. Instead of that Adela smiled. ‘If my words were reported to you, what fault have you to find with me?’