Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 2.djvu/319

Rh Her impudence astounded me; but I complied, and followed her into the library. She closed the door, and walked up to the fire.

"Who told you this?" said she.

"No one: I am not incapable of seeing for myself."

"Ah, you are suspicious!" cried she, smiling with a gleam of hope—hitherto, there had been a kind of desperation in her hardihood; now she was evidently relieved.

"If I were suspicious," I replied, "I should have discovered your infamy long before, No, Lady Lowborough, I do not found my charge upon suspicion."

"On what do you found it then?" said she, throwing herself into an arm-chair, and stretching out her feet to the fender, with an obvious effort to appear composed.

"I enjoy a moonlight ramble as well as you," I answered, steadily fixing my eyes upon her: "and the shrubbery happens to be one of my favourite resorts."