Even to look into her face
did not silence the calumnious whispering. Her beauty was fuel to
his jealousy, and his jealousy alone made the supposition of her
guilt for a moment tenable. It was on his lips to accuse her, to
ease himself with savage innuendoes, those 'easy things to
understand' which come naturally from such a man in such a
situation. But to do that would be to break with her for ever, and
the voice that urged her innocence would not let him incur such
risk. The loss of his possessions was a calamity so great that as
yet he could not realise its possibility; the loss of his wife
impressed his imagination more immediately, and was in this moment
the more active fear.
He was in the strange position of a man who finds all at once that
he _dare_ not believe that which he has been trying his best to
believe. If Adela were guilty of plotting with Eldon, it meant that
he himself was the object of her utter hatred, a hideous thought to
entertain. It threw him back upon her innocence. Egoism had to do
the work of the finer moral perceptions.
'Isn't it rather strange,' he said, not this time sneeringly, but
seeking for support against his intolerable suspicions, 'that you
never moved those buffets before?'
'I never had need of them.'
'And that hole has never been cleaned out?'
'Never; clearly never.
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