Was there any truth in it? And did
Steel know the truth concerning his wife?
Your imaginative man is ever quick to form a theory based upon facts of
his own involuntary invention. Langholm formed numerous theories and
invented innumerable facts during the four-and-twenty hours of his
present separation from the heroine and the villain of these romances.
The likeliest of the lot was the idea that the pair had really met
abroad, at some out-of-the-way place, where Rachel had been in hiding
from the world, and that in her despair of receiving common justice from
her kind, she had accepted the rich man without telling him who she was.
His subsequent enlightenment was Langholm's explanation of Steel's
coldness towards his wife.
He wondered if it was the kind of coldness that would ever be removed;
if Steel believed her guilty, it never would. Langholm would not have
admitted it, was not even aware of it in his own introspective mind, but
he almost hoped that Steel was not thoroughly convinced of his wife's
innocence.
The night of the dinner-party was so fine and the roads so clean that
Langholm went off on his bicycle once more, making an incongruous figure
in his dress-suit, but pedalling sedately to keep cool.
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