widow and led her to say with obvious eagerness:

"You know the facts?"

"I have read all the papers."

"I was not believed on the stand."

"It was your manner--"

"I could not help my manner. I was keeping something back, and,
being unused to deceit, I could not act quite naturally."

"Why did you keep something back? When you saw the unfavourable
impression made by your reticence, why did you not speak up and
frankly tell your story?"

"Because I was ashamed. Because I thought it would hurt me more
to speak than to keep silent. I do not think so now; but I did
then--and so made my great mistake. You must remember not only
the awful shock of my double loss, but the sense of guilt
accompanying it; for my husband and I had quarreled that night,
quarreled bitterly--that was why I had run away into another
room and not because I was feeling ill and impatient of the
baby's fretful cries."

"So people have thought." In saying this, Miss Strange was
perhaps cruelly emphatic. "You wish to explain that quarrel? You
think it will be doing any good to your cause to go into that
matter with me now?"