What more can a wife do in the case of an over-insistent lover?
And how should a husband expect an explanation when he had literally thrown her into her lover's arms, or at least had left her defenceless against his solicitations! Had he treated her differently after the Wombo episode in the beginning, she might have told him the truth about her former relations with Willoughby Maule.
As things had been, it was rather for Maule than for Colin that she found excuse.
She was bitterly hurt and offended against her husband.

Oh, yes.

He was right.

They could never again be the same to each other.

If he had come back penitent, pleading for forgiveness, overwhelmed with contrition at her dismissal of Maule, she might then perhaps have explained everything and they might have become reconciled.