She has solemnly promised." "But in words-- ?" "Oh yes, in words enough--since it's a matter of words.

To keep up HER lie so long as I keep up mine." "And what do you call 'her' lie ?" "Why, the pretence that she believes me.

Believes they're innocent." "She positively believes then they're guilty?
She has arrived at that, she's really content with it, in the absence of proof ?" It was here, each time, that Fanny Assingham most faltered; but always at last to get the matter, for her own sense, and with a long sigh, sufficiently straight.

"It isn't a question of belief or of proof, absent or present; it's inevitably, with her, a question of natural perception, of insurmountable feeling.

She irresistibly knows that there's something between them.