Wherever she had touched him,
she had found him generous and sound and sweet. That he was capable of
what seemed to her the baldest and basest treachery was simply
unthinkable. And what reason was there ever to drag his name into her
thought of the affair at all? Was it not Mr. Queed who had written all
the reformatory articles since Colonel Cowles's death--Mr. Queed who had
promised only twenty-four hours ago to do his utmost for the cause at
the critical moment to-day?
And yet ... and yet ... her mind clung desperately to the thought that
possibly the assistant editor had not done this thing, after all. The
memory of his visit to her, less than a week ago, was very vivid in her
mind. What sort of world was it that a man with a face of such shining
honesty could stoop to such shabby dishonesty?--that a man who had
looked at her as he had looked at her that night, could turn again and
strike her such a blow? That Queed should have done this seemed as
inconceivable as that West should have done it. There was the wild
hundredth chance that neither had done it, that the article had been
written by somebody else and published by mistake.
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