"Oh, you know about her, do you? Yes, the Mrs. Trent of Easedale. She's firmly persuaded that I killed her husband. I believe she came over here simply and solely in order to worm some sort of confession out of me."
He stopped, amazed at himself. Then he looked at Lettice. If deep unaffected interest can pull confidences out of a man, here was his excuse. Why, she was all eyes and ears!
"So that was it!" she said. "That was who she was!"
"You don't mean to tell me you knew about this before?"
"No, no, not her name. But I knew she didn't much like you."
"I begin to think what Denis said about you was true," Gardiner remarked after a pause.
"That you could see through a flight of stairs and a deal door."
"You wouldn't, it's out of Dickens," said Gardiner, with a laugh which hid considerable perturbation. So she had guessed that, had she, before he knew it himself? What was there she did not guess? He began to feel helplessly transparent. Yet again he was surprised to find he did not hate her for intruding. Lettice could pick her way among sensibilities like a cat among china, and she neither misunderstood nor misjudged. There were episodes in his life which he would have been ashamed to show to Denis. He could have shown them every one to Lettice, unmarried girl though she was, and with no experience of the rough and tumble of life. Somehow one never thought of Lettice as a girl. He looked up at her. She had dropped her work and sat motionless, her eyes fixed on the sunset. In nature as in human nature, Lettice looked to the limit of sight, and beyond, to the city of God. It was that distant view which gave her the perspective for things near. While Gardiner was making these reflections, she turned her head suddenly and surprised him with a question:
It was so unlike Lettice to offer advice that he stared in surprise.
"I don't want to go into that business again," said Gardiner. "He did hate it all so desperately--no, I don't want to rake it up again. Nor do I see any necessity. What does it matter?"
She hesitated. She found it chronically hard to put her thoughts into speech, and in this case there were reservations to be made. Gardiner took the words out of her mouth.
"You don't mean you think she'd go for him too?"