"Didn't HE," the Colonel inquired, "want anything more? Or
didn't, for that matter, poor Charlotte herself?"
She kept her eyes on him; there was a manner in it that half
answered. "They were thoroughly in love. She might have been
his--" She checked herself; she even for a minute lost herself.
"She might have been anything she liked--except his wife."
"But she wasn't," said the Colonel very smokingly.
"She wasn't," Mrs. Assingham echoed.
The echo, not loud but deep, filled for a little the room. He
seemed to listen to it die away; then he began again. "How are
you sure?"
She waited before saying, but when she spoke it was definite.
"There wasn't time."
He had a small laugh for her reason; he might have expected some
other. "Does it take so much time?"
She herself, however, remained serious. "It takes more than they
had."
He was detached, but he wondered. "What was the matter with their
time?" After which, as, remembering it all, living it over and
piecing it together, she only considered, "You mean that you came
in with your idea?" he demanded.
It brought her quickly to the point, and as if also in a measure
to answer herself. "Not a bit of it--THEN. But you surely
recall," she went on, "the way, a year ago, everything took
place. They had parted before he had ever heard of Maggie."
"Why hadn't he heard of her from Charlotte herself?"
"Because she had never spoken of her."
"Is that also," the Colonel inquired, "what she has told you?"
"I'm not speaking," his wife returned, "of what she has told me.
That's one thing. I'm speaking of what I know by myself. That's
another."
"You feel, in other words, that she lies to you?" Bob Assingham
more sociably asked.
She neglected the question, treating it as gross. "She never so
much, at the time, as named Maggie."
It was so positive that it appeared to strike him. "It's he then
who has told you?"