"Is that why you gave him the hundred pounds? If he is such a scoundrel as you say, why did you not show him the door, and defy him to do his worst?" The calmness with which she spoke made me writhe. My tone became dogged. "I have no excuse to offer. I was, and am, quite conscious of my folly." "I don't wish to say anything unkind to you; I quite realise how you stand in need of all the kindness one can show you; but I don't at all understand your story as you tell it. Why did you quarrel with this woman?" "I did not quarrel with her; she quarrelled with me." "But it takes two to make a quarrel. Why did she quarrel with you?" "I tell you, she had been drinking." "But, even then, what did she say to you, or what did you say to her, which could have caused such a disturbance? Because, I can see, from your own statements, that both of you had lost your tempers." I was silent. I knew not what to answer. "I suppose that the woman was a stranger to you--that you had never seen her before?" What could I say? I felt that if I did not tell the truth then it would come out afterwards. Better, while I was about it, make a clean breast of everything. And yet I found it hard. Lucy's ideas are narrow. She has her own views of things, and strong views some of them are. She thinks, for instance, that there ought to be the same standard for a man as for a woman: the same moral standard--that a man ought to come to his wife with clean hands, in the same sense in which a woman ought to come with clean hands to her husband. I am afraid that I had been rather in the habit of finding favour in her eyes by endorsing her opinions. It seemed hard that the only real peccadillo of which I had been guilty should be cropping up against me after all this lapse of time. I had repented of it, and put it behind me, long ago; and yet here it was, as fresh and vigorous as ever, rising to confront me from its tomb. Lucy seemed struck by my continued silence. She repeated her question in an altered form. "Had you seen her before?" "Many years ago." "Many years ago? You knew her, then?" "I used to know her, to my sorrow, once upon a time, long before I knew you, my dear." The final words were intended as a sort of propitiation--I saw that she was getting roused at last--but they failed in their effect. She stood straight up, facing me, her fists clenched at her sides. "Who was she? What was her name?" "Her name was Ellen Howth. I assure you, my dear, that there is no necessity for you to get warm. I have heard and seen nothing of her since I married you. Indeed, these many years I have thought she was dead." "Why did you think she was dead? What did it matter to you if she was dead or alive? What did you know of her?" "Really nothing, I am afraid, to her advantage." "What do you mean? Tell me the truth, Tom, if you have never told me it before. What was she to you?" "She was nothing to me. My dear, she was a person of indifferent character."