The first words I said to him, when I saw the turn things had taken, were, “Do me justice⁠—clear my character of a stain on it which you know I don’t deserve. I don’t want you to make a clean breast of it to my husband⁠—only tell him, on your word of honour as a gentleman, that he is wrong, and that I am not to blame in the way he thinks I am. Do me that justice, at least, after all I have done for you.” He flatly refused, in so many words. He told me plainly that it was his interest to let my husband and all my neighbours believe the falsehood⁠—because, as long as they did so they were quite certain never to suspect the truth. I had a spirit of my own, and I told him they should know the truth from my lips. His reply was short, and to the point. If I spoke, I was a lost woman, as certainly as he was a lost man.