"Come," he said, as she made no reply, "they might easily deceive you. Tell me what you know, and I will believe you,--and there are very few women in your place I would say as much to." "I do not think," she answered, "that they have deceived me." "Then," he returned, his face hardening, "_you_ have deceived _me_!" "Yes," she answered, turning white, "I suppose I have." There was a moment of dead silence, in which his shrewd eyes did their work as well as they had done it at any time during his fifty years of life. Then he spoke to her again. "They wanted me here because they wanted to make use of me," he said. "You knew that." "They did not put it in that way," she answered. "I dare say you know that." "You were to befool me as far as you could, and make the place agreeable to me,--you knew that?" She turned paler. "I--I have liked you very sincerely!" she broke forth, piteously. "I have liked you! Out of all the rest, that one thing was true! Don't--ah, don't think it was not." His expression for a moment was a curiously undecided one; he was obliged to rally himself with a sharp rub at his hair. "I'll tell you what I think of that when you have answered me another question," he said. "There is a person who has done a great deal of work in this matter, and has been very anxious about it, probably because he has invested in it more money than he can spare,--buying lands and doing one thing and another. That person is your husband, Mr. Richard Amory. Tell me if you knew that." The blood rushed to her face and then left it again. "Richard!" she exclaimed. "Richard!" and she caught at the mantel and held to it. His eyes did not leave her for an instant. He nodded his head with a significance whose meaning was best known to himself. "Sit down," he said. "I see you did not know that." She did as he told her. It was as if such a flash of light had struck across her mental vision as half blinded her. "Not Richard!" she cried out; and even as she said it a thousand proofs rushed back upon her and spoke the whole shameful truth for themselves. Blundel came nearer to her, his homely, angry face, in spite of its anger, expressing honest good feeling as strongly as any much handsomer one might have done. "I knew there had been deep work somewhere," he said. "I saw it from the first. As for you, you have been treated pretty badly. I supposed they persuaded you that you might as well amuse one man as another,--and I was the man. I dare say there is more behind than I can see. You had nothing to gain as far as you knew, that's plain enough to me." "No," she exclaimed, "it was not I who was to gain. They did not think of--of me!"