"Why not?"
"Well--I wouldn't, that's all."
"You wouldn't? Why wouldn't you? You must have a reason." Undine faced
her with levelled brows. "Without a reason you can't have changed so
utterly since our last talk. You were positive enough then that I had a
right to make him see me."
Somewhat to her surprise, Indiana made no effort to elude the challenge.
"Yes, I did think so then. But I know now that it wouldn't do you the
least bit of good."
"Have they turned him so completely against me? I don't care if they
have! I know him--I can get him back."
"That's the trouble." Indiana shed on her a gaze of cold compassion.
"It's not that any one has turned him against you. It's worse than
that--"
"What can be?"
"You'll hate me if I tell you."
"Then you'd better make him tell me himself!"
"I can't. I tried to. The trouble is that it was YOU--something you did,
I mean. Something he found out about you--"
Undine, to restrain a spring of anger, had to clutch both arms of her
chair. "About me? How fearfully false! Why, I've never even LOOKED at
anybody--!"
"It's nothing of that kind." Indiana's mournful head-shake seemed to
deplore, in Undine, an unsuspected moral obtuseness. "It's the way you
acted to your own husband."
"I--my--to Ralph? HE reproaches me for that? Peter Van Degen does?"
"Well, for one particular thing. He says that the very day you went off
with him last year you got a cable from New York telling you to come
back at once to Mr. Marvell, who was desperately ill."
"How on earth did he know?" The cry escaped Undine before she could
repress it.
"It's true, then?" Indiana exclaimed. "Oh, Undine--"
Undine sat speechless and motionless, the anger frozen to terror on her
lips.
Mrs. Rolliver turned on her the reproachful gaze of the deceived
benefactress. "I didn't believe it when he told me; I'd never have
thought it of you. Before you'd even applied for your divorce!"
Undine made no attempt to deny the charge or to defend herself. For
a moment she was lost in the pursuit of an unseizable clue--the
explanation of this monstrous last perversity of fate. Suddenly she rose
to her feet with a set face.
"The Marvells must have told him--the beasts!" It relieved her to be
able to cry it out.
"It was your husband's sister--what did you say her name was? When you
didn't answer her cable, she cabled Mr. Van Degen to find out where you
were and tell you to come straight back."