Why were you?
Why were you ?" (breaking off with an uncontrollable emotion).
"I should not have been hard upon you--I should have made allowances.
God knows we all need it!" I sit listening in a stony silence: every bit of me seems turned into cold rock.
"But _now_," he says, regathering his composure, and speaking with a resolute, stern quiet; "I have no other resource--you have left me none--but to come to you, and ask point-blank, is this true, or is it false ?" For a moment, my throat seems absolutely stopped up, choked; there seems no passage for my voice, through its dry, parched gates.

Then at length I speak faintly: "Is _what_ true?
is what false?
I suppose you will not expect me to deny it, before I know what it is ?" He does not at once answer.

He takes a turn once or twice up and down the silent room, in strong endeavor to overcome and keep down his agitation, then he returns and speaks; with a face paler, indeed, than I could have imagined any thing so bronzed could be; graver, more austere than I ever thought I should see it, but still without bluster or hectoring violence.
"Is it true, then ?" he says, speaking in a very low key.

"Great God! that I should have to put such a question to my wife; that one evening, about a week ago, on the very day, indeed, that the news of my intended return arrived, you were seen parting with--with--_Musgrave_" (he seems to have an intense difficulty in pronouncing the name) "at or after nightfall, on the edge of Brindley Wood, _he_ in a state of the most evident and extreme agitation, and _you_ in floods of tears!--is it true, or is it false ?--for God's sake, speak quickly!" But I cannot comply with his request.

I am _gasping_.