Probably the conviction that he had misjudged his wife had been stealing imperceptibly into Major Carstairs' mind during many lonely days spent on the Indian Frontier; and though he could never have stated with any degree of certainty the exact moment in which he understood, at last, that his wife, the woman he had married, the mother of his child, was incapable of the action which a censorious and unkind world had been ready to attribute to her, when once that conviction entered his honest, logical, if somewhat stubborn mind, it had found a home there for ever.
His chance meeting with Anstice, whose belief in Mrs. Carstairs was too genuine to be doubted for an instant, had come at an opportune moment, setting, as it were, the seal on his own changed judgment; and being essentially a man of honour, upright and just to a fault, he deemed it not only a duty but a privilege to come directly to his wife, and while asking her pardon for his unjustifiable suspicions, assure her of his firm determination to see her innocence made manifest before all the world.
* * * * *
Something of this Anstice guessed as he watched the interchange of glances between husband and wife on this bitter November evening, and he told himself that few women would have accepted their husband's tardy reparation as this woman had done. It did not need a magician to know that husband and wife were truly reunited, and though some might have been inclined to label Chloe Carstairs poor-spirited in that she had apparently forgiven her husband's mistrust so easily, Anstice told himself that Chloe was a woman in a thousand, that this very forgiveness and lack of any natural resentment showed the unalloyed fineness, the pure gold of her character, as nothing else could have done.
* * * * *
It was Chloe who broke the silence which followed Major Carstairs' last words, and as he looked at her Anstice was struck suddenly by the change in her appearance this evening. Where she had hitherto been cold, impassive, indifferent, now she was warm, glowing, responsive. In her pale cheeks was a most unusual wild-rose colour and her blue, almond-shaped eyes held a light which made them look like two beautiful sapphires shining in the sun.
When she spoke her rich, deep voice lost its undertone of melancholy, and rang joyously, with the soft beauty of a 'cello's lower notes.
"You see, Dr. Anstice, your faith in me--for which I have never attempted to thank you--is at last within measure of being justified!" She smiled happily. "And although Tochatti has served me faithfully she cannot be allowed to go on with this thing--if she be the one responsible. The question is, How is it to be brought home to her?"