,« Mutimer pursued,
with a quiet sneer, »but no doubt there are people who would benefit by it.«
    Adela had an impulse of indignation. It showed itself in her cold, steady
reply.
    »The will was thick with dust. It has been lying there a long time.«
    »Of course. They wouldn't bungle over an important thing like this.«
    He was once more scrutinising her. The suspicion was a genuine one, and
involved even more than Adela could imagine. If there had been a plot, such plot
assuredly included the discoverer of the document. Could he in his heart charge
Adela with that? There were two voices at his ear, and of equal persuasiveness.
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.«
    She had risen to her feet, impelled by a glimmering of the thought in which
he examined her. What she next said came from her without premeditation. Her
tongue seemed to speak independently of her will.
    »One thing I have said that was not true. It was not money that slipped
down, but my ring. I had taken it off and laid it on the Prayer-book.«
    »Your ring?
