In all their political troubles, she had understood him better than the Duchess had done.

Looking on from a distance she had understood the man's character as it had come to her both from his wife and from her own husband.
That he was unjust to her,--cruelly unjust, she was quite sure.

He accused her of intentional privity to a secret which it behoved him to know, and of being a party to that secrecy.

Whereas from the moment in which she had heard the secret she had determined that it must be made known to him.

She felt that she had deserved his good opinion in all things, but in nothing more than in the way in which she had acted in this matter.