"Did she point it out by waiting for him to-night on the staircase in the manner you described to me?"
"I really, my dear, described to you a manner?"-- the Colonel clearly, from want of habit, scarce recognised himself in the imputation.
"Yes--for once in a way; in those few words we had after you had watched them come up you told me something of what you had seen. You did n't tell me very much--THAT you could n't for your life; but I saw for myself that. strange to say. you had received (284) your impression, and I felt therefore that there must indeed have been something out of the way for you so to betray it." She was fully upon him now, and she confronted him with his proved sensibility to the occasion--confronted him because of her own uneasy need to profit by it. It came over her still more than at the time, it came over her that he had been struck with something, even HE, poor dear man; and that for this to have occurred there must have been much to be struck with. She tried in fact to corner him, to pack him insistently down, in the truth of his plain vision, the very plainness of which was its value; for so recorded, she felt, none of it would escape--she should have it at hand for reference. "Come, my dear--you thought what you thought: in the presence of what you saw you could n't resist thinking. I don't ask more of it than that. And your idea is worth, this time, quite as much as any of mine--so that you can't pretend as usual that mine has run away with me. I have n't caught up with you. I stay where I am. But I see," she concluded, "where you are, and I'm much obliged to you for letting me. You give me a point de repere outside myself--which is where I like it. Now I can work round you."
Their conveyance, as she spoke, stopped at their door, and it was on the spot another fact of value for her that her husband, though seated on the side by which they must alight, made no movement. They were in a high degree votaries of the latch-key, so that their household had gone to bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman waited in peace. It was so indeed that for a minute Bob (285) Assingham waited--conscious of a reason for replying to this address otherwise than by the so obvious method of turning his back. He did n't turn his face, but stared straight before him, and his wife had already gathered from the fact of his not moving all the proof she could desire--proof, that is, of her own contention.
She knew he never cared what she said, and his neglect of his chance to show it was thereby the more eloquent. "Leave it," he at last remarked, "to THEM."
"'Leave it'--?" She wondered.
"Let them alone. They'll manage."
"They'll manage, you mean, to do everything they want? Ah there then you are!"
"They'll manage in their own way," the Colonel almost cryptically repeated.
