The Law and the Lady, Chapters 1 - 25THE LAW AND THE LADY


A Novel




NOTE:
ADDRESSED TO THE READER.




IN offering this book to you, I have no Preface to write. I have only to request 
that you will bear in mind certain established truths, which occasionally escape 
your memory when you are reading a work of fiction. Be pleased, then, to 
remember (First): That the actions of human beings are not invariably governed 
by the laws of pure reason. (Secondly): That we are by no means always in the 
habit of bestowing our love on the objects which are the most deserving of it, 
in the opinions of our friends. (Thirdly and Lastly): That Characters which may 
not have appeared, and Events which may not have taken place, within the limits 
of our own individual experience, may nevertheless be perfectly natural 
Characters and perfectly probable Events, for all that. Having said these few 
words, I have said all that seems to be necessary at the present time, in 
presenting my new Story to your notice. 
W. C.
LONDON, February 1, 1875. 






THE LAW AND THE LADY.
PART I. 
PARADISE LOST.







CHAPTER I.
THE BRIDE'S MISTAKE.



"FOR after this manner in the old time the holy women also who trusted in God 
adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands; even as Sarah 
obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, 
and are not afraid with any amazement."
Concluding the Marriage Service of the Church of England in those well-known 
words, my uncle Starkweather shut up his book, and looked at me across the altar 
rails with a hearty expression of interest on his broad, red face. At the same 
time my aunt, Mrs. Starkweather, standing by my side, tapped me smartly on the 
shoulder, and said,
"Valeria, you are married!"
Where were my thoughts? What had become of my attention? I was too bewildered to 
know. I started and looked at my new husband. He seemed to be almost as much 
bewildered as I was. The same thought had, as I believe, occurred to us both at 
the same moment. Was it really possible--in spite of his mother's opposition to 
our marriage--that we were Man and Wife? My aunt Starkweather settled the 
question by a second tap on my shoulder.
"Take his arm!" she whispered, in the tone of a woman who had lost all patience 
with me.
I took his arm.
"Follow your uncle."
Holding fast by my husband's arm, I followed my uncle and the curate who had 
assisted him at the marriage.
The two clergymen led us into the vestry. The church was in one of the dreary 
quarters of London, situated between the City and the West End; the day was 
dull; the atmosphere was heavy and damp. We were a melancholy little wedding 
party, worthy of the dreary neighborhood and the dull day. No relatives or 
friends of my husband's were present; his family, as I have already hinted, 
disapproved of his marriage. Except my uncle and my aunt, no other relations 
appeared on my side. I had lost both my parents, and I had but few friends. My 
dear father's faithful old clerk, Benjamin, attended the wedding to "give me 
away," as the phrase is. He had known me from a child, and, in my forlorn 
position, he was as good as a father to me.
The last ceremony left to be performed was, as usual, the signing of the 
marriage register. In the confusion of the moment (and in the absence of any 
information to guide me) I committed a mistake--ominous, in my aunt 
Starkweather's opinion, of evil to come. I signed my married instead of my 
maiden name.
"What!" cried my uncle, in his loudest and cheeriest tones, "you have forgotten 
your own name already? Well, well! let us hope you will never repent parting 
with it so readily. Try again, Valeria--try again."
With trembling fingers I struck the pen through my first effort, and wrote my 
maiden name, very badly indeed, as follows: 



Valeria Brinton



When it came to my husband's turn I noticed, with surprise, that his hand 
trembled too, and that he produced a very poor specimen of his customary 
signature: 



Eustace Woodville



My aunt, on being requested to sign, complied under protest. "A bad beginning!" 
she said, pointing to my first unfortunate signature with the feather end of her 
pen. "I hope, my dear, you may not live to regret it."
Even then, in the days of my ignorance and my innocence, that curious outbreak 
of my aunt's superstition produced a certain uneasy sensation in my mind. It was 
a consolation to me to feel the reassuring pressure of my husband's hand. It was 
an indescribable relief to hear my uncle's hearty voice wishing me a happy life 
at parting. The good man had left his north-country Vicarage (my home since the 
death of my parents) expressly to read the service at my marriage; and he and my 
aunt had arranged to return by the mid-day train. He folded me in his great 
strong arms, and he gave me a kiss which must certainly have been heard by the 
idlers waiting for the bride and bridegroom outside the church door.
"I wish you health and happiness, my love, with all my heart. You are old enough 
to choose for yourself, and--no offense, Mr. Woodville, you and I are new 
friends--and I pray God, Valeria, it may turn out that you have chosen well. Our 
house will be dreary enough without you; but I don't complain, my dear. On the 
contrary, if this change in your life makes you happier, I rejoice. Come, come! 
don't cry, or you will set your aunt off--and it's no joke at her time of life. 
Besides, crying will spoil your beauty. Dry your eyes and look in the glass 
there, and you will see that I am right. Good-by, child--and God bless you!"
He tucked my aunt under his arm, and hurried out. My heart sank a little, dearly 
as I loved my husband, when I had seen the last of the true friend and protector 
of my maiden days.
The parting with old Benjamin came next. "I wish you well, my dear; don't forget 
me," was all he said. But the old days at home came back on me at those few 
words. Benjamin always dined with us on Sundays in my father's time, and always 
brought some little present with him for his master's child. I was very near to 
"spoiling my beauty" (as my uncle had put it) when I offered the old man my 
cheek to kiss, and heard him sigh to himself, as if he too were not quite 
hopeful about my future life.
My husband's voice roused me, and turned my mind to happier thoughts.
"Shall we go, Valeria?" he asked.
I stopped him on our way out to take advantage of my uncle's advice; in other 
words, to see how I looked in the glass over the vestry fireplace.



What does the glass show me?
The glass shows a tall and slender young woman of three-and-twenty years of age. 
She is not at all the sort of person who attracts attention in the street, 
seeing that she fails to exhibit the popular yellow hair and the popular painted 
cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later days (as it was dressed years 
since to please her father), in broad ripples drawn back from the forehead, and 
gathered into a simple knot behind (like the hair of the Venus de Medicis), so 
as to show the neck beneath. Her complexion is pale: except in moments of 
violent agitation there is no color to be seen in her face. Her eyes are of so 
dark a blue that they are generally mistaken for black. Her eyebrows are well 
enough in form, but they are too dark and too strongly marked. Her nose just 
inclines toward the aquiline bend, and is considered a little too large by 
persons difficult to please in the matter of noses. The mouth, her best feature, 
is very delicately shaped, and is capable of presenting great varieties of 
expression. As to the face in general, it is too narrow and too long at the 
lower part, too broad and too low in the higher regions of the eyes and the 
head. The whole picture, as reflected in the glass, represents a woman of some 
elegance, rather too pale, and rather too sedate and serious in her moments of 
silence and repose--in short, a person who fails to strike the ordinary observer 
at first sight, but who gains in general estimation on a second, and sometimes 
on a third view. As for her dress, it studiously conceals, instead of 
proclaiming, that she has been married that morning. She wears a gray cashmere 
tunic trimmed with gray silk, and having a skirt of the same material and color 
beneath it. On her head is a bonnet to match, relieved by a quilling of white 
muslin with one deep red rose, as a morsel of positive color, to complete the 
effect of the whole dress.
Have I succeeded or failed in describing the picture of myself which I see in 
the glass? It is not for me to say. I have done my best to keep clear of the two 
vanities--the vanity of depreciating and the vanity of praising my own personal 
appearance. For the rest, well written or badly written, thank Heaven it is 
done!
And whom do I see in the glass standing by my side?
I see a man who is not quite so tall as I am, and who has the misfortune of 
looking older than his years. His forehead is prematurely bald. His big 
chestnut-colored beard and his long overhanging mustache are prematurely 
streaked with gray. He has the color in the face which my face wants, and the 
firmness in his figure which my figure wants. He looks at me with the tenderest 
and gentlest eyes (of a light brown) that I ever saw in the countenance of a 
man. His smile is rare and sweet; his manner, perfectly quiet and retiring, has 
yet a latent persuasiveness in it which is (to women) irresistibly winning. He 
just halts a little in his walk, from the effect of an injury received in past 
years, when he was a soldier serving in India, and he carries a thick bamboo 
cane, with a curious crutch handle (an old favorite), to help himself along 
whenever he gets on his feet, in doors or out. With this one little drawback (if 
it is a drawback), there is nothing infirm or old or awkward about him; his 
slight limp when he walks has (perhaps to my partial eyes) a certain quaint 
grace of its own, which is pleasanter to see than the unrestrained activity of 
other men. And last and best of all, I love him! I love him! I love him! And 
there is an end of my portrait of my husband on our wedding-day.
The glass has told me all I want to know. We leave the vestry at last.
The sky, cloudy since the morning, has darkened while we have been in the 
church, and the rain is beginning to fall heavily. The idlers outside stare at 
us grimly under their umbrellas as we pass through their ranks and hasten into 
our carriage. No cheering; no sunshine; no flowers strewn in our path; no grand 
breakfast; no genial speeches; no bridesmaids; no fathers or mother's blessing. 
A dreary wedding--there is no denying it--and (if Aunt Starkweather is right) a 
bad beginning as well!
A coupÈ has been reserved for us at the railway station. The attentive porter, 
on the look-out for his fee pulls down the blinds over the side windows of the 
carriage, and shuts out all prying eyes in that way. After what seems to be an 
interminable delay the train starts. My husband winds his arm round me. "At 
last!" he whispers, with love in his eyes that no words can utter, and presses 
me to him gently. My arm steals round his neck; my eyes answer his eyes. Our 
lips meet in the first long, lingering kiss of our married life.
Oh, what recollections of that journey rise in me as I write! Let me dry my 
eyes, and shut up my paper for the day.



CHAPTER II.
THE BRIDE'S THOUGHTS.



WE had been traveling for a little more than an hour when a change passed 
insensibly over us both.
Still sitting close together, with my hand in his, with my head on his shoulder, 
little by little we fell insensibly into silence. Had we already exhausted the 
narrow yet eloquent vocabulary of love? Or had we determined by unexpressed 
consent, after enjoying the luxury of passion that speaks, to try the deeper and 
finer rapture of passion that thinks? I can hardly determine; I only know that a 
time came when, under some strange influence, our lips were closed toward each 
other. We traveled along, each of us absorbed in our own reverie. Was he 
thinking exclusively of me--as I was thinking exclusively of him? Before the 
journey's end I had my doubts; at a little later time I knew for certain that 
his thoughts, wandering far away from his young wife, were all turned inward on 
his own unhappy self.
For me the secret pleasure of filling my mind with him, while I felt him by my 
side, was a luxury in itself.
I pictured in my thoughts our first meeting in the neighborhood of my uncle's 
house.
Our famous north-country trout stream wound its flashing and foaming way through 
a ravine in the rocky moorland. It was a windy, shadowy evening. A heavily 
clouded sunset lay low and red in the west. A solitary angler stood casting his 
fly at a turn in the stream where the backwater lay still and deep under an 
overhanging bank. A girl (myself) standing on the bank, invisible to the 
fisherman beneath, waited eagerly to see the trout rise.
The moment came; the fish took the fly.
Sometimes on the little level strip of sand at the foot of the bank, sometimes 
(when the stream turned again) in the shallower water rushing over its rocky 
bed, the angler followed the captured trout, now letting the line run out and 
now winding it in again, in the difficult and delicate process of "playing" the 
fish. Along the bank I followed to watch the contest of skill and cunning 
between the man and the trout. I had lived long enough with my uncle 
Starkweather to catch some of his enthusiasm for field sports, and to learn 
something, especially, of the angler's art. Still following the stranger, with 
my eyes intently fixed on every movement of his rod and line, and with not so 
much as a chance fragment of my attention to spare for the rough path along 
which I was walking, I stepped by chance on the loose overhanging earth at the 
edge of the bank, and fell into the stream in an instant.
The distance was trifling, the water was shallow, the bed of the river was 
(fortunately for me) of sand. Beyond the fright and the wetting I had nothing to 
complain of. In a few moments I was out of the water and up again, very much 
ashamed of myself, on the firm ground. Short as the interval was, it proved long 
enough to favor the escape of the fish. The angler had heard my first 
instinctive cry of alarm, had turned, and had thrown aside his rod to help me. 
We confronted each other for the first time, I on the bank and he in the shallow 
water below. Our eyes encountered, and I verily believe our hearts encountered 
at the same moment. This I know for certain, we forgot our breeding as lady and 
gentleman: we looked at each other in barbarous silence.
I was the first to recover myself. What did I say to him?
I said something about my not being hurt, and then something more, urging him to 
run back and try if he might not yet recover the fish.
He went back unwillingly. He returned to me--of course without the fish. Knowing 
how bitterly disappointed my uncle would have been in his place, I apologized 
very earnestly. In my eagerness to make atonement, I even offered to show him a 
spot where he might try again, lower down the stream.
He would not hear of it; he entreated me to go home and change my wet dress. I 
cared nothing for the wetting, but I obeyed him without knowing why.
He walked with me. My way back to the Vicarage was his way back to the inn. He 
had come to our parts, he told me, for the quiet and retirement as much as for 
the fishing. He had noticed me once or twice from the window of his room at the 
inn. He asked if I were not the vicar's daughter.
I set him right. I told him that the vicar had married my mother's sister, and 
that the two had been father and mother to me since the death of my parents. He 
asked if he might venture to call on Doctor Starkweather the next day, 
mentioning the name of a friend of his, with whom he believed the vicar to be 
acquainted. I invited him to visit us, as if it had been my house; I was 
spell-bound under his eyes and under his voice. I had fancied, honestly fancied, 
myself to have been in love often and often before this time. Never in any other 
man's company had I felt as I now felt in the presence of this man. Night seemed 
to fall suddenly over the evening landscape when he left me. I leaned against 
the Vicarage gate. I could not breathe, I could not think; my heart fluttered as 
if it would fly out of my bosom--and all this for a stranger! I burned with 
shame; but oh, in spite of it all, I was so happy!
And now, when little more than a few weeks had passed since that first meeting, 
I had him by my side; he was mine for life! I lifted my head from his bosom to 
look at him. I was like a child with a new toy--I wanted to make sure that he 
was really my own.
He never noticed the action; he never moved in his corner of the carriage. Was 
he deep in his own thoughts? and were they thoughts of Me?
I laid down my head again softly, so as not to disturb him. My thoughts wandered 
backward once more, and showed me another picture in the golden gallery of the 
past.



The garden at the Vicarage formed the new scene. The time was night. We had met 
together in secret. We were walking slowly to and fro, out of sight of the 
house, now in the shadowy paths of the shrubbery, now in the lovely moonlight on 
the open lawn.
We had long since owned our love and devoted our lives to each other. Already 
our interests were one; already we shared the pleasures and the pains of life. I 
had gone out to meet him that night with a heavy heart, to seek comfort in his 
presence and to find encouragement in his voice. He noticed that I sighed when 
he first took me in his arms, and he gently turned my head toward the moonlight 
to read my trouble in my face. How often he had read my happiness there in the 
earlier days of our love!
"You bring bad news, my angel," he said, lifting my hair tenderly from my 
forehead as he spoke. "I see the lines here which tell me of anxiety and 
distress. I almost wish I loved you less dearly, Valeria."
"Why?"
"I might give you back your freedom. I have only to leave this place, and your 
uncle would be satisfied, and you would be relieved from all the cares that are 
pressing on you now."
"Don't speak of it, Eustace! If you want me to forget my cares, say you love me 
more dearly than ever."
He said it in a kiss. We had a moment of exquisite forgetfulness of the hard 
ways of life--a moment of delicious absorption in each other. I came back to 
realities fortified and composed, rewarded for all that I had gone through, 
ready to go through it all over again for another kiss. Only give a woman love, 
and there is nothing she will not venture, suffer, and do.
"No, they have done with objecting. They have remembered at last that I am of 
age, and that I can choose for myself. They have been pleading with me, Eustace, 
to give you up. My aunt, whom I thought rather a hard woman, has been 
crying--for the first time in my experience of her. My uncle, always kind and 
good to me, has been kinder and better than ever. He has told me that if I 
persist in becoming your wife, I shall not be deserted on my wedding-day. 
Wherever we may marry, he will be there to read the service, and my aunt will go 
to the church with me. But he entreats me to consider seriously what I am 
doing--to consent to a separation from you for a time--to consult other people 
on my position toward you, if I am not satisfied with his opinion. Oh, my 
darling, they are as anxious to part us as if you were the worst instead of the 
best of men!"
"Has anything happened since yesterday to increase their distrust of me?" he 
asked.
"Yes,"
"What is it?"
"You remember referring my uncle to a friend of yours and of his?"
"Yes. To Major Fitz-David."
"My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David."
"Why?"
He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike his natural tone that 
his voice sounded quite strange to me.
"You won't be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?" I said. "My uncle, as I understood 
him, had several motives for writing to the major. One of them was to inquire if 
he knew your mother's address."
Eustace suddenly stood still.
I paused at the same moment, feeling that I could venture no further without the 
risk of offending him.
To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our engagement to my 
uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a little flighty and strange. The 
vicar had naturally questioned him about his family. He had answered that his 
father was dead; and he had consented, though not very readily, to announce his 
contemplated marriage to his mother. Informing us that she too lived in the 
country, he had gone to see her, without more particularly mentioning her 
address. In two days he had returned to the Vicarage with a very startling 
message. His mother intended no disrespect to me or my relatives, but she 
disapproved so absolutely of her son's marriage that she (and the members of her 
family, who all agreed with her) would refuse to be present at the ceremony, if 
Mr. Woodville persisted in keeping his engagement with Dr. Starkweather's niece. 
Being asked to explain this extraordinary communication, Eustace had told us 
that his mother and his sisters were bent on his marrying another lady, and that 
they were bitterly mortified and disappointed by his choosing a stranger to the 
family. This explanation was enough for me; it implied, so far as I was 
concerned, a compliment to my superior influence over Eustace, which a woman 
always receives with pleasure. But it failed to satisfy my uncle and my aunt. 
The vicar expressed to Mr. Woodville a wish to write to his mother, or to see 
her, on the subject of her strange message. Eustace obstinately declined to 
mention his mother's address, on the ground that the vicar's interference would 
be utterly useless. My uncle at once drew the conclusion that the mystery about 
the address indicated something wrong. He refused to favor Mr. Woodville's 
renewed proposal for my hand, and he wrote the same day to make inquiries of Mr. 
Woodville's reference and of his own friend Major Fitz-David.
Under such circumstances as these, to speak of my uncle's motives was to venture 
on very delicate ground. Eustace relieved me from further embarrassment by 
asking a question to which I could easily reply.
"Has your uncle received any answer from Major Fitz-David?" he inquired.
"Yes.
"Were you allowed to read it?" His voice sank as he said those words; his face 
betrayed a sudden anxiety which it pained me to see.
"I have got the answer with me to show you," I said.
He almost snatched the letter out of my hand; he turned his back on me to read 
it by the light of the moon. The letter was short enough to be soon read. I 
could have repeated it at the time. I can repeat it now.



"DEAR VICAR--Mr. Eustace Woodville is quite correct in stating to you that he is 
a gentleman by birth and position, and that he inherits (under his deceased 
father's will) an independent fortune of two thousand a year.
"Always yours, 
"LAWRENCE FITZ-DAVID." 



"Can anybody wish for a plainer answer than that?" Eustace asked, handing the 
letter back to me.
"If I had written for information about you," I answered, "it would have been 
plain enough for me."
"Is it not plain enough for your uncle?"
"No."
"What does he say?"
"Why need you care to know, my darling?"
"I want to know, Valeria. There must be no secret between us in this matter. Did 
your uncle say anything when he showed you the major's letter?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"My uncle told me that his letter of inquiry filled three pages, and he bade me 
observe that the major's answer contained one sentence only. He said, 'I 
volunteered to go to Major Fitz-David and talk the matter over. You see he takes 
no notice of my proposal. I asked him for the address of Mr. Woodville's mother. 
He passes over my request, as he has passed over my proposal--he studiously 
confines himself to the shortest possible statement of bare facts. Use your 
common-sense, Valeria. Isn't this rudeness rather remarkable on the part of a 
man who is a gentleman by birth and breeding, and who is also a friend of 
mine?'"
Eustace stopped me there.
"Did you answer your uncle's question?" he asked.
"No," I replied. "I only said that I did not understand the major's conduct."
"And what did your uncle say next? If you love me, Valeria, tell me the truth."
"He used very strong language, Eustace. He is an old man; you must not be 
offended with him."
"I am not offended. What did he say?"
"He said, 'Mark my words! There is something under the surface in connection 
with Mr. Woodville, or with his family, to which Major Fitz-David is not at 
liberty to allude. Properly interpreted, Valeria, that letter is a warning. Show 
it to Mr. Woodville, and tell him (if you like) what I have just told you--'"
Eustace stopped me again.
"You are sure your uncle said those words?" he asked, scanning my face 
attentively in the moonlight.
"Quite sure. But I don't say what my uncle says. Pray don't think that!"
He suddenly pressed me to his bosom, and fixed his eyes on mine. His look 
frightened me.
"Good-by, Valeria!" he said. "Try and think kindly of me, my darling, when you 
are married to some happier man."
He attempted to leave me. I clung to him in an agony of terror that shook me 
from head to foot.
"What do you mean?" I asked, as soon as I could speak. "I am yours and yours 
only. What have I said, what have I done, to deserve those dreadful words?"
"We must part, my angel," he answered, sadly. "The fault is none of yours; the 
misfortune is all mine. My Valeria! how can you marry a man who is an object of 
suspicion to your nearest and dearest friends? I have led a dreary life. I have 
never found in any other woman the sympathy with me, the sweet comfort and 
companionship, that I find in you. Oh, it is hard to lose you! it is hard to go 
back again to my unfriended life! I must make the sacrifice, love, for your 
sake. I know no more why that letter is what it is than you do. Will your uncle 
believe me? will your friends believe me? One last kiss, Valeria! Forgive me for 
having loved you--passionately, devotedly loved you. Forgive me--and let me go!"
I held him desperately, recklessly. His eyes, put me beside myself; his words 
filled me with a frenzy of despair.
"Go where you may," I said, "I go with you! Friends--reputation--I care nothing 
who I lose, or what I lose! Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden me! I 
can't live without you. I must and will be your wife!"
Those wild words were all I could say before the misery and madness in me forced 
their way outward in a burst of sobs and tears.
He yielded. He soothed me with his charming voice; he brought me back to myself 
with his tender caresses. He called the bright heaven above us to witness that 
he devoted his whole life to me. He vowed--oh, in such solemn, such eloquent 
words!--that his one thought, night and day, should be to prove himself worthy 
of such love as mine. And had he not nobly redeemed the pledge? Had not the 
betrothal of that memorable night been followed by the betrothal at the altar, 
by the vows before God! Ah, what a life was before me! What more than mortal 
happiness was mine!



Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight of seeing him by 
my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!
Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to the sweet 
realities of the present, I let my cheek touch his cheek, I whispered to him 
softly, "Oh, how I love you! how I love you!"
The next instant I started back from him. My heart stood still. I put my hand up 
to my face. What did I feel on my cheek? (I had not been weeping--I was too 
happy.) What did I feel on my cheek? A tear!
His face was still averted from me. I turned it toward me, with my own hands, by 
main force.
I looked at him--and saw my husband, on our wedding-day, with his eyes full of 
tears.



CHAPTER III.
RAMSGATE SANDS.



EUSTACE succeeded in quieting my alarm. But I can hardly say that he succeeded 
in satisfying my mind as well.
He had been thinking, he told me, of the contrast between his past and his 
present life. Bitter remembrance of the years that had gone had risen in his 
memory, and had filled him with melancholy misgivings of his capacity to make my 
life with him a happy one. He had asked himself if he had not met me too 
late--if he were not already a man soured and broken by the disappointments and 
disenchantments of the past? Doubts such as these, weighing more and more 
heavily on his mind, had filled his eyes with the tears which I had 
discovered--tears which he now entreated me, by my love for him, to dismiss from 
my memory forever. I forgave him, comforted him, revived him; but there were 
moments when the remembrance of what I had seen troubled me in secret, and when 
I asked myself if I really possessed my husband's full confidence as he 
possessed mine.
We left the train at Ramsgate.
The favorite watering-place was empty; the season was just over. Our 
arrangements for the wedding tour included a cruise to the Mediterranean in a 
yacht lent to Eustace by a friend. We were both fond of the sea, and we were 
equally desirous, considering the circumstances under which we had married, of 
escaping the notice of friends and acquaintances. With this object in view, 
having celebrated our marriage privately in London, we had decided on 
instructing the sailing-master of the yacht to join us at Ramsgate. At this port 
(when the season for visitors was at an end) we could embark far more privately 
than at the popular yachting stations situated in the Isle of Wight.
Three days passed--days of delicious solitude, of exquisite happiness, never to 
be forgotten, never to be lived over again, to the end of our lives!
Early on the morning of the fourth day, just before sunrise, a trifling incident 
happened, which was noticeable, nevertheless, as being strange to me in my 
experience of myself.
I awoke, suddenly and unaccountably, from a deep and dreamless sleep with an 
all-pervading sensation of nervous uneasiness which I had never felt before. In 
the old days at the Vicarage my capacity as a sound sleeper had been the subject 
of many a little harmless joke. From the moment when my head was on the pillow I 
had never known what it was to awake until the maid knocked at my door. At all 
seasons and times the long and uninterrupted repose of a child was the repose 
that I enjoyed.
And now I had awakened, without any assignable cause, hours before my usual 
time. I tried to compose myself to sleep again. The effort was useless. Such a 
restlessness possessed me that I was not even able to lie still in the bed. My 
husband was sleeping soundly by my side. In the fear of disturbing him I rose, 
and put on my dressing-gown and slippers.
I went to the window. The sun was just rising over the calm gray sea. For a 
while the majestic spectacle before me exercised a tranquilizing influence on 
the irritable condition of my nerves. But ere long the old restlessness returned 
upon me. I walked slowly to and fro in the room, until I was weary of the 
monotony of the exercise. I took up a book, and laid it aside again. My 
attention wandered; the author was powerless to recall it. I got on my feet once 
more, and looked at Eustace, and admired him and loved him in his tranquil 
sleep. I went back to the window, and wearied of the beautiful morning. I sat 
down before the glass and looked at myself. How haggard and worn I was already, 
through awaking before my usual time! I rose again, not knowing what to do next. 
The confinement to the four walls of the room began to be intolerable to me. I 
opened the door that led into my husband's dressing-room, and entered it, to try 
if the change would relieve me.
The first object that I noticed was his dressing-case, open on the toilet-table.
I took out the bottles and pots and brushes and combs, the knives and scissors 
in one compartment, the writing materials in another. I smelled the perfumes and 
pomatums; I busily cleaned and dusted the bottles with my handkerchief as I took 
them out. Little by little I completely emptied the dressing-case. It was lined 
with blue velvet. In one corner I noticed a tiny slip of loose blue silk. Taking 
it between my finger and thumb, and drawing it upward, I discovered that there 
was a false bottom to the case, forming a secret compartment for letters and 
papers. In my strange condition--capricious, idle, inquisitive--it was an 
amusement to me to take out the papers, just as I had taken out everything else.
I found some receipted bills, which failed to interest me; some letters, which 
it is needless to say I laid aside after only looking at the addresses; and, 
under all, a photograph, face downward, with writing on the back of it. I looked 
at the writing, and saw these words:
"To my dear son, Eustace."
His mother! the woman who had so obstinately and mercilessly opposed herself to 
our marriage!
I eagerly turned the photograph, expecting to see a woman with a stern, 
ill-tempered, forbidding countenance. To my surprise, the face showed the 
remains of great beauty; the expression, though remarkably firm, was yet 
winning, tender, and kind. The gray hair was arranged in rows of little quaint 
old-fashioned curls on either side of the head, under a plain lace cap. At one 
corner of the mouth there was a mark, apparently a mole, which added to the 
characteristic peculiarity of the face. I looked and looked, fixing the portrait 
thoroughly in my mind. This woman, who had almost insulted me and my relatives, 
was, beyond all doubt or dispute, so far as appearances went, a person 
possessing unusual attractions--a person whom it would be a pleasure and a 
privilege to know.
I fell into deep thought. The discovery of the photograph quieted me as nothing 
had quieted me yet.
The striking of a clock downstairs in the hall warned me of the flight of time. 
I carefully put back all the objects in the dressing-case (beginning with the 
photograph) exactly as I had found them, and returned to the bedroom. As I 
looked at my husband, still sleeping peacefully, the question forced itself into 
my mind, What had made that genial, gentle mother of his so sternly bent on 
parting us? so harshly and pitilessly resolute in asserting her disapproval of 
our marriage?
Could I put my question openly to Eustace when he awoke? No; I was afraid to 
venture that length. It had been tacitly understood be tween us that we were not 
to speak of his mother--and, besides, he might be angry if he knew that I had 
opened the private compartment of his dressing-case.



After breakfast that morning we had news at last of the yacht. The vessel was 
safely moored in the inner harbor, and the sailing-master was waiting to receive 
my husband's orders on board.
Eustace hesitated at asking me to accompany him to the yacht. It would be 
necessary for him to examine the inventory of the vessel, and to decide 
questions, not very interesting to a woman, relating to charts and barometers, 
provisions and water. He asked me if I would wait for his return. The day was 
enticingly beautiful, and the tide was on the ebb. I pleaded for a walk on the 
sands; and the landlady at our lodgings, who happened to be in the room at the 
time, volunteered to accompany me and take care of me. It was agreed that we 
should walk as far as we felt inclined in the direction of Broadstairs, and that 
Eustace should follow and meet us on the sands, after having completed his 
arrangements on board the yacht.
In half an hour more the landlady and I were out on the beach.
The scene on that fine autumn morning was nothing less than enchanting. The 
brisk breeze, the brilliant sky, the flashing blue sea, the sun-bright cliffs 
and the tawny sands at their feet, the gliding procession of ships on the great 
marine highway of the English Channel--it was all so exhilarating, it was all so 
delightful, that I really believe if I had been by myself I could have danced 
for joy like a child. The one drawback to my happiness was the landlady's 
untiring tongue. She was a forward, good-natured, empty-headed woman, who 
persisted in talking, whether I listened or not, and who had a habit of 
perpetually addressing me as "Mrs. Woodville," which I thought a little 
overfamiliar as an assertion of equality from a person in her position to a 
person in mine.
We had been out, I should think, more than half an hour, when we overtook a lady 
walking before us on the beach.
Just as we were about to pass the stranger she took her handkerchief from her 
pocket, and accidentally drew out with it a letter, which fell unnoticed by her, 
on the sand. I was nearest to the letter, and I picked it up and offered it to 
the lady.
The instant she turned to thank me, I stood rooted to the spot. There was the 
original of the photographic portrait in the dressing-case! there was my 
husband's mother, standing face to face with me! I recognized the quaint little 
gray curls, the gentle, genial expression, the mole at the corner of the mouth. 
No mistake was possible. His mother herself!
The old lady, naturally enough, mistook my confusion for shyness. With perfect 
tact and kindness she entered into conversation with me. In another minute I was 
walking side by side with the woman who had sternly repudiated me as a member of 
her family; feeling, I own, terribly discomposed, and not knowing in the least 
whether I ought or ought not to assume the responsibility, in my husband's 
absence, of telling her who I was.
In another minute my familiar landlady, walking on the other side of my 
mother-in-law, decided the question for me. I happened to say that I supposed we 
must by that time be near the end of our walk--the little watering-place called 
Broadstairs. "Oh no, Mrs. Woodville! cried the irrepressible woman, calling me 
by my name, as usual; "nothing like so near as you think!"
I looked with a beating heart at the old lady.
To my unutterable amazement, not the faintest gleam of recognition appeared in 
her face. Old Mrs. Woodville went on talking to young Mrs. Woodville just as 
composedly as if she had never heard her own name before in her life!
My face and manner must have betrayed something of the agitation that I was 
suffering. Happening to look at me at the end of her next sentence, the old lady 
started, and said, in her kindly way,
"I am afraid you have overexerted yourself. You are very pale--you are looking 
quite exhausted. Come and sit down here; let me lend you my smelling-bottle."
I followed her, quite helplessly, to the base of the cliff. Some fallen 
fragments of chalk offered us a seat. I vaguely heard the voluble landlady's 
expressions of sympathy and regret; I mechanically took the smelling-bottle 
which my husband's mother offered to me, after hearing my name, as an act of 
kindness to a stranger
If I had only had myself to think of, I believe I should have provoked an 
explanation on the spot. But I had Eustace to think of. I was entirely ignorant 
of the relations, hostile or friendly, which existed between his mother and 
himself. What could I do?
In the meantime the old lady was still speaking to me with the most considerate 
sympathy. She too was fatigued. she said. She had passed a weary night at the 
bedside of a near relative staying at Ramsgate. Only the day before she had 
received a telegram announcing that one of her sisters was seriously ill. She 
was herself thank God, still active and strong, and she had thought it her duty 
to start at once for Ramsgate. Toward the morning the state of the patient had 
improved. "The doctor assures me ma'am, that there is no immediate danger; and I 
thought it might revive me, after my long night at the bedside, if I took a 
little walk on the beach."
I heard the words--I understood what they meant--but I was still too bewildered 
and too intimidated by my extraordinary position to be able to continue the 
conversation. The landlady had a sensible suggestion to make--the landlady was 
the next person who spoke.
"Here is a gentleman coming," she said to me, pointing in the direction of 
Ramsgate. You can never walk back. Shall we ask him to send a chaise from 
Broadstairs to the gap in the cliff?"
The gentleman advanced a little nearer.
The landlady and I recognized him at the same moment. It was Eustace coming to 
meet us, as we had arranged. The irrepressible landlady gave the freest 
expression to her feelings. Oh, Mrs. Woodville, ain't it lucky? here is Mr. 
Woodville himself ."
Once more I looked at my mother-in-law. Once more the name failed to produce the 
slightest effect on her. Her sight was not so keen as ours; she had not 
recognized her son yet. He had young eyes like us, and he recognized his mother. 
For a moment he stopped like a man thunderstruck. Then he came on--his ruddy 
face white with suppressed emotion, his eyes fixed on his mother.
"You here!" he said to her.
"How do you do, Eustace?" she quietly rejoined. "Have you heard of your aunt's 
illness too? Did you know she was staying at Ramsgate?"
He made no answer. The landlady, drawing the inevitable inference from the words 
that she had just heard, looked from me to my mother-in-law in a state of 
amazement, which paralyzed even her tongue. I waited with my eyes on my husband, 
to see what he would do. If he had delayed acknowledging me another moment, the 
whole future course of my life might have been altered--I should have despised 
him.
He did not delay. He came to my side and took my hand.
"Do you know who this is?" be said to his mother.
She answered, looking at me with a courteous bend of her head:
"A lady I met on the beach, Eustace, who kindly restored to me a letter that I 
dropped. I think I heard the name" (she turned to the landlady): Mrs. Woodville, 
was it not?"
My husband's fingers unconsciously closed on my hand with a grasp that hurt me. 
He set his mother right, it is only just to say, without one cowardly moment of 
hesitation.
"Mother," he said to her, very quietly, "this lady is my wife."
She had hitherto kept her seat. She now rose slowly and faced her son in 
silence. The first expression of surprise passed from her face. It was succeeded 
by the most terrible look of mingled indignation and contempt that I ever saw in 
a woman's eyes.
"I pity your wife," she said.
With those words and no more, lifting her hand she waved him back from her, and 
went on her way again, as we had first found her, alone. 



CHAPTER IV.
ON THE WAY HOME.



LEFT by ourselves, there was a moment of silence among us. Eustace spoke first.
"Are you able to walk back?" he said to me. "Or shall we go on to Broadstairs, 
and return to Ramsgate by the railway?"
He put those questions as composedly, so far as his manner was concerned, as if 
nothing remarkable had happened. But his eyes and his lips betrayed him. They 
told me that he was suffering keenly in secret. The extraordinary scene that had 
just passed, far from depriving me of the last remains of my courage, had strung 
up my nerves and restored my self-possession. I must have been more or less than 
woman if my self-respect had not been wounded, if my curiosity had not been 
wrought to the highest pitch, by the extraordinary conduct of my husband's 
mother when Eustace presented me to her. What was the secret of her despising 
him, and pitying me? Where was the explanation of her incomprehensible apathy 
when my name was twice pronounced in her hearing? Why had she left us, as if the 
bare idea of remaining in our company was abhorrent to her? The foremost 
interest of my life was now the interest of penetrating these mysteries. Walk? I 
was in such a fever of expectation that I felt as if I could have walked to the 
world's end, if I could only keep my husband by my side, and question him on the 
way.
"I am quite recovered," I said. "Let us go back, as we came, on foot."
Eustace glanced at the landlady. The landlady understood him.
"I won't intrude my company on you, sir," she said, sharply. "I have some 
business to do at Broadstairs, and, now I am so near, I may as well go on. 
Good-morning, Mrs. Woodville."
She laid a marked emphasis on my name, and she added one significant look at 
parting, which (in the preoccupied state of my mind at that moment) I entirely 
failed to comprehend. There was neither time nor opportunity to ask her what she 
meant. With a stiff little bow, addressed to Eustace, she left us as his mother 
had left us taking the way to Broadstairs, and walking rapidly.
At last we were alone.
I lost no time in beginning my inquiries; I wasted no words in prefatory 
phrases. In the plainest terms I put the question to him:
"What does your mother's conduct mean?"
Instead of answering, he burst into a fit of laughter--loud, coarse, hard 
laughter, so utterly unlike any sound I had ever yet heard issue from his lips, 
so strangely and shockingly foreign to his character as I understood it, that I 
stood still on the sands and openly remonstrated with him.
"Eustace! you are not like yourself," I said. You almost frighten me."
He took no notice. He seemed to be pursuing some pleasant train of thought just 
started in his mind.
"So like my mother!" he exclaimed, with the air of a man who felt irresistibly 
diverted by some humorous idea of his own. "Tell me all about it, Valeria!"
"Tell you!" I repeated. "After what has happened, surely it is your duty to 
enlighten me."
"You don't see the joke," he said.
"I not only fail to see the joke," I rejoined, "I see something in your mother's 
language and your mother's behavior which justifies me in asking you for a 
serious explanation."
"My dear Valeria, if you understood my mother as well as I do, a serious 
explanation of her conduct would be the last thing in the world that you would 
expect from me. The idea of taking my mother seriously!" He burst out laughing 
again. "My darling, you don't know how you amuse me."
It was all forced: it was all unnatural. He, the most delicate, the most refined 
of men--a gentleman in the highest sense of the word--was coarse and loud and 
vulgar! My heart sank under a sudden sense of misgiving which, with all my love 
for him, it was impossible to resist. In unutterable distress and alarm I asked 
myself, "Is my husband beginning to deceive me? is he acting a part, and acting 
it badly, before we have been married a week?" I set myself to win his 
confidence in a new way. He was evidently determined to force his own point of 
view on me. I determined, on my side, to accept his point of view.
"You tell me I don't understand your mother," I said, gently. "Will you help me 
to understand her?"
"It is not easy to help you to understand a woman who doesn't understand 
herself," he answered. "But I will try. The key to my poor dear mother's 
character is, in one word--Eccentricity."
If he had picked out the most inappropriate word in the whole dictionary to 
describe the lady whom I had met on the beach, "Eccentricity" would have been 
that word. A child who had seen what I saw, who had heard what I heard would 
have discovered that he was trifling--grossly, recklessly trifling--with the 
truth
"Bear in mind what I have said," he proceeded; "and if you want to understand my 
mother, do what I asked you to do a minute since--tell me all about it. How came 
you to speak to her, to begin with?"
"Your mother told you, Eustace. I was walking just behind her, when she dropped 
a letter by accident--"
"No accident," he interposed. "The letter was dropped on purpose."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed. "Why should your mother drop the letter on purpose?"
"Use the key to her character, my dear. Eccentricity! My mother's odd way of 
making acquaintance with you."
"Making acquaintance with me? I have just told you that I was walking behind 
her. She could not have known of the existence of such a person as myself until 
I spoke to her first."
"So you suppose, Valeria."
"I am certain of it."
"Pardon me--you don't know my mother as I do."
I began to lose all patience with him.
"Do you mean to tell me," I said, "that your mother was out on the sands to-day 
for the express purpose of making acquaintance with Me?"
"I have not the slightest doubt of it," he answered, coolly.
"Why, she didn't even recognize my name!" I burst out. "Twice over the landlady 
called me Mrs. Woodville in your mother's hearing, and twice over, I declare to 
you on my word of honor, it failed to produce the slightest impression on her. 
She looked and acted as if she had never heard her own name before in her life."
"'Acted' is the right word," he said, just as composedly as before. "The women 
on the stage are not the only women who can act. My mother's object was to make 
herself thoroughly acquainted with you, and to throw you off your guard by 
speaking in the character of a stranger. It is exactly like her to take that 
roundabout way of satisfying her curiosity about a daughter-in-law she 
disapproves of. If I had not joined you when I did, you would have been examined 
and cross-examined about yourself and about me, and you would innocently have 
answered under the impression that you were speaking to a chance acquaintance. 
There is my mother all over! She is your enemy, remember--not your friend. She 
is not in search of your merits, but of your faults. And you wonder why no 
impression was produced on her when she heard you addressed by your name! Poor 
innocent! I can tell you this--you only discovered my mother in her own 
character when I put an end to the mystification by presenting you to each 
other. You saw how angry she was, and now you know why."
I let him go on without saying a word. I listened--oh! with such a heavy heart, 
with such a crushing sense of disenchantment and despair! The idol of my 
worship, the companion, guide, protector of my life--had he fallen so low? could 
he stoop to such shameless prevarication as this?
Was there one word of truth in all that he had said to me? Yes! If I had not 
discovered his mother's portrait, it was certainly true that I should not have 
known, not even have vaguely suspected, who she really was. Apart from this, the 
rest was lying, clumsy lying, which said one thing at least for him, that he was 
not accustomed to falsehood and deceit. Good Heavens! if my husband was to be 
believed, his mother must have tracked us to London, tracked us to the church, 
tracked us to the railway station, tracked us to Ramsgate! To assert that she 
knew me by sight as the wife of Eustace, and that she had waited on the sands 
and dropped her letter for the express purpose of making acquaintance with me, 
was also to assert every one of these monstrous probabilities to be facts that 
had actually happened!
I could say no more. I walked by his side in silence, feeling the miserable 
conviction that there was an abyss in the shape of a family secret between my 
husband and me. In the spirit, if not in the body, we were separated, after a 
married life of barely four days.
"Valeria," he asked, "have you nothing to say to me?"
"Nothing."
"Are you not satisfied with my explanation?"
I detected a slight tremor in his voice as he put that question. The tone was, 
for the first time since we had spoken together, a tone that my experience 
associated with him in certain moods of his which I had already learned to know 
well. Among the hundred thousand mysterious influences which a man exercises 
over a woman who loves him, I doubt if there is any more irresistible to her 
than the influence of his voice. I am not one of those women who shed tears on 
the smallest provocation: it is not in my temperament, I suppose. But when I 
heard that little natural change in his tone my mind went back (I can't say why) 
to the happy day when I first owned that I loved him. I burst out crying.
He suddenly stood still, and took me by the hand. He tried to look at me.
I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground. I was ashamed of my weakness and 
my want of spirit. I was determined not to look at him.
In the silence that followed he suddenly dropped on his knees at my feet, with a 
cry of despair that cut through me like a knife.
"Valeria! I am vile--I am false--I am unworthy of you. Don't believe a word of 
what I have been saying--lies, lies, cowardly, contemptible lies! You don't know 
what I have gone through; you don't know how I have been tortured. Oh, my 
darling, try not to despise me! I must have been beside myself when I spoke to 
you as I did. You looked hurt; you looked offended; I didn't know what to do. I 
wanted to spare you even a moment's pain--I wanted to hush it up, and have done 
with it. For God's sake don't ask me to tell you any more! My love! my angel! 
it's something between my mother and me; it's nothing that need disturb you; 
it's nothing to anybody now. I love you, I adore you; my whole heart and soul 
are yours. Be satisfied with that. Forget what has happened. You shall never see 
my mother again. We will leave this place to-morrow. We will go away in the 
yacht. Does it matter where we live, so long as we live for each other? Forgive 
and forget! Oh, Valeria, Valeria, forgive and forget!"
Unutterable misery was in his face; unutterable misery was in his voice. 
Remember this. And remember that I loved him.
"It is easy to forgive," I said, sadly. "For your sake, Eustace, I will try to 
forget."
I raised him gently as I spoke. He kissed my hands with the air of a man who was 
too humble to venture on any more familiar expression of his gratitude than 
that. The sense of embarrassment between us as we slowly walked on again was so 
unendurable that I actually cast about in my mind for a subject of conversation, 
as if I had been in the company of a stranger! In mercy to him, I asked him to 
tell me about the yacht.
He seized on the subject as a drowning man seizes on the hand that rescues him.
On that one poor little topic of the yacht he talked, talked, talked, as if his 
life depended upon his not being silent for an instant on the rest of the way 
back. To me it was dreadful to hear him. I could estimate what he was suffering 
by the violence which he--ordinarily a silent and thoughtful man--was now doing 
to his true nature, and to the prejudices and habits of his life. With the 
greatest difficulty I preserved my self-control until we reached the door of our 
lodgings. There I was obliged to plead fatigue, and ask him to let me rest for a 
little while in the solitude of my own room.
"Shall we sail to-morrow?" he called after me suddenly, as I ascended the 
stairs.
Sail with him to the Mediterranean the next day? Pass weeks and weeks absolutely 
alone with him, in the narrow limits of a vessel, with his horrible secret 
parting us in sympathy further and further from each other day by day? I 
shuddered at the thought of it.
"To-morrow is rather a short notice," I said. "Will you give me a little longer 
time to prepare for the voyage?"
"Oh yes--take any time you like," he answered, not (as I thought) very 
willingly. "While you are resting--there are still one or two little things to 
be settled--I think I will go back to the yacht. Is there anything I can do for 
you, Valeria, before I go?"
"Nothing--thank you, Eustace."
He hastened away to the harbor. Was he afraid of his own thoughts, if he were 
left by himself in the house. Was the company of the sailing-master and the 
steward better than no company at all?
It was useless to ask. What did I know about him or his thoughts? I locked 
myself into my room.



CHAPTER V.
THE LANDLADY'S DISCOVERY.



I SAT down, and tried to compose my spirits. Now or never was the time to decide 
what it was my duty to my husband and my duty to myself to do next.
The effort was beyond me. Worn out in mind and body alike, I was perfectly 
incapable of pursuing any regular train of thought. I vaguely felt--if I left 
things as they were--that I could never hope to remove the shadow which now 
rested on the married life that had begun so brightly. We might live together, 
so as to save appearances. But to forget what had happened, or to feel satisfied 
with my position, was beyond the power of my will. My tranquillity as a 
woman--perhaps my dearest interests as a wife--depended absolutely on 
penetrating the mystery of my mother-in-law's conduct, and on discovering the 
true meaning of the wild words of penitence and self-reproach which my husband 
had addressed to me on our way home.
So far I could advance toward realizing my position--and no further. When I 
asked myself what was to be done next, hopeless confusion, maddening doubt, 
filled my mind, and transformed me into the most listless and helpless of living 
women.
I gave up the struggle. In dull, stupid, obstinate despair, I threw myself on my 
bed, and fell from sheer fatigue into a broken, uneasy sleep.
I was awakened by a knock at the door of my room.
Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to me. Was some new 
trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand? Half nervously, half irritably, I 
asked who was there.
The landlady's voice answered me.
"Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?"
I opened the door. There is no disguising it--though I loved him so dearly, 
though I had left home and friends for his sake--it was a relief to me, at that 
miserable time, to know that Eustace had not returned to the house.
The landlady came in, and took a seat, without waiting to be invited, close by 
my side. She was no longer satisfied with merely asserting herself as my equal. 
Ascending another step on the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform 
of patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.
"I have just returned from Broadstairs," she began. "I hope you will do me the 
justice to believe that I sincerely regret what has happened."
I bowed, and said nothing.
"As a gentlewoman myself," proceeded the landlady--"reduced by family 
misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman--I feel sincere sympathy 
with you. I will even go further than that. I will take it on myself to say that 
I don't blame you. No, no. I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised 
at your mother-in-law's conduct as I was; and that is saying a great deal--a 
great deal indeed. However, I have a duty to perform. It is disagreeable, but it 
is not the less a duty on that account. I am a single woman; not from want of 
opportunities of changing my condition--I beg you will understand that--but from 
choice. Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons into my 
house. There must be no mystery about the positions of my lodgers. Mystery in 
the position of a lodger carries with it--what shall I say? I don't wish to 
offend you--I will say, a certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own 
common-sense. Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself 
to--Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian spirit. As a lady 
yourself--I will even go the length of saying a cruelly used lady--you will, I 
am sure, understand--"
I could endure it no longer. I stopped her there.
"I understand," I said, "that you wish to give us notice to quit your lodgings. 
When do you want us to go?"
The landlady held up a long, lean, red hand, in a sorrowful and sisterly 
protest.
"No," she said. "Not that tone; not those looks. It's natural you should be 
annoyed; it's natural you should be angry. But do--now do please try and control 
yourself. I put it to your own common-sense (we will say a week for the notice 
to quit)--why not treat me like a friend? You don't know what a sacrifice, what 
a cruel sacrifice, I have made--entirely for your sake.
"You?" I exclaimed. "What sacrifice?"
"What sacrifice?" repeated the landlady. "I have degraded myself as a 
gentlewoman. I have forfeited my own self-respect." She paused for a moment, and 
suddenly seized my hand in a perfect frenzy of friendship. "Oh, my poor dear!" 
cried this intolerable person. "I have discovered everything. A villain has 
deceived you. You are no more married than I am!"
I snatched my hand out of hers, and rose angrily from my chair.
"Are you mad?" I asked.
The landlady raised her eyes to the ceiling with the air of a person who had 
deserved martyrdom, and who submitted to it cheerfully.
"Yes," she said. "I begin to think I am mad--mad to have devoted myself to an 
ungrateful woman, to a person who doesn't appreciate a sisterly and Christian 
sacrifice of self. Well, I won't do it again. Heaven forgive me--I won't do it 
again!"
"Do what again?" I asked.
"Follow your mother-in-law," cried the landlady, suddenly dropping the character 
of a martyr, and assuming the character of a vixen in its place. "I blush when I 
think of it. I followed that most respectable person every step of the way to 
her own door."
Thus far my pride had held me up. It sustained me no longer. I dropped back 
again into my chair, in undisguised dread of what was coming next.
"I gave you a look when I left you on the beach," pursued the landlady, growing 
louder and louder and redder and redder as she went on. "A grateful woman would 
have understood that look. Never mind! I won't do it again I overtook your 
mother-in-law at the gap in the cliff. I followed her--oh, how I feel the 
disgrace of it now!--I followed her to the station at Broadstairs. She went back 
by train to Ramsgate. I went back by train to Ramsgate. She walked to her 
lodgings. I walked to her lodgings. Behind her. Like a dog. Oh, the disgrace of 
it! Providentially, as I then thought--I don't know what to think of it now--the 
landlord of the house happened to be a friend of mine, and happened to be at 
home. We have no secrets from each other where lodgers are concerned. I am in a 
position to tell you, madam, what your mother-in-law's name really is. She knows 
nothing about any such person as Mrs. Woodville, for an excellent reason. Her 
name is not Woodville. Her name (and consequently her son's name) is 
Macallan--Mrs. Macallan, widow of the late General Macallan. Yes! your husband 
is not your husband. You are neither maid, wife, nor widow. You are worse than 
nothing, madam, and you leave my house!"
I stopped her as she opened the door to go out. She had roused my temper by this 
time. The doubt that she had cast on my marriage was more than mortal 
resignation could endure.
"Give me Mrs. Macallan's address," I said.
The landlady's anger receded into the background, and the landlady's 
astonishment appeared in its place.
"You don't mean to tell me you are going to the old lady herself?" she said.
"Nobody but the old lady can tell me what I want to know," I answered. "Your 
discovery (as you call it) may be enough for you; it is not enough for me. How 
do we know that Mrs. Macallan may not have been twice married? and that her 
first husband's name may not have been Woodville?"
The landlady's astonishment subsided in its turn, and the landlady's curiosity 
succeeded as the ruling influence of the moment. Substantially, as I have 
already said of her, she was a good-natured woman. Her fits of temper (as is 
usual with good-natured people) were of the hot and the short-lived sort, easily 
roused and easily appeased.
"I never thought of that," she said. "Look here! if I give you the address, will 
you promise to tell me all about it when you come back?"
I gave the required promise, and received the address in return.
"No malice," said the landlady, suddenly resuming all her old familiarity with 
me.
"No malice," I answered, with all possible cordiality on my side.
In ten minutes more I was at my mother-in-law's lodgings.



CHAPTER VI.
MY OWN DISCOVERY.



FORTUNATELY for me, the landlord did not open the door when I rang. A stupid 
maid-of-all-work, who never thought of asking me for my name, let me in. Mrs. 
Macallan was at home, and had no visitors with her. Giving me this information, 
the maid led the way upstairs, and showed me into the drawing-room without a 
word of announcement.
My mother-in-law was sitting alone, near a work-table, knitting. The moment I 
appeared in the doorway she laid aside her work, and, rising, signed to me with 
a commanding gesture of her hand to let her speak first.
"I know what you have come here for," she said. "You have come here to ask 
questions. Spare yourself, and spare me. I warn you beforehand that I will not 
answer any questions relating to my son."
It was firmly, but not harshly said. I spoke firmly in my turn.
"I have not come here, madam, to ask questions about your son," I answered. "I 
have come, if you will excuse me, to ask you a question about yourself."
She started, and looked at me keenly over her spectacles. I had evidently taken 
her by surprise.
"What is the question?" she inquired.
"I now know for the first time, madam, that your name is Macallan," I said. 
"Your son has married me under the name of Woodville. The only honorable 
explanation of this circumstance, so far as I know, is that my husband is your 
son by a first marriage. The happiness of my life is at stake. Will you kindly 
consider my position? Will you let me ask you if you have been twice married, 
and if the name of your first husband was Woodville?"
She considered a little before she replied.
"The question is a perfectly natural one in your position," she said. "But I 
think I had better not answer it."
"May I ask why?"
"Certainly. If I answered you, I should only lead to other questions, and I 
should be obliged to decline replying to them. I am sorry to disappoint you. I 
repeat what I said on the beach--I have no other feeling than a feeling of 
sympathy toward you. If you had consulted me before your marriage, I should 
willingly have admitted you to my fullest confidence. It is now too late. You 
are married. I recommend you to make the best of your position, and to rest 
satisfied with things as they are."
"Pardon me, madam," I remonstrated. "As things are, I don't know that I am 
married. All I know, unless you enlighten me, is that your son has married me 
under a name that is not his own. How can I be sure whether I am or am not his 
lawful wife?"
"I believe there can be no doubt that you are lawfully my son's wife," Mrs. 
Macallan answered. "At any rate it is easy to take a legal opinion on the 
subject. If the opinion is that you are not lawfully married, my son (whatever 
his faults and failings may be) is a gentleman. He is incapable of willfully 
deceiving a woman who loves and trusts him. He will do you justice. On my side, 
I will do you justice, too. If the legal opinion is adverse to your rightful 
claims, I will promise to answer any questions which you may choose to put to 
me. As it is, I believe you to be lawfully my son's wife; and I say again, make 
the best of your position. Be satisfied with your husband's affectionate 
devotion to you. If you value your peace of mind and the happiness of your life 
to come, abstain from attempting to know more than you know now."
She sat down again with the air of a woman who had said her last word.
Further remonstrance would be useless; I could see it in her face; I could hear 
it in her voice. I turned round to open the drawing-room door.
"You are hard on me, madam," I said at parting. "I am at your mercy, and I must 
submit."
She suddenly looked up, and answered me with a flush on her kind and handsome 
old face.
"As God is my witness, child, I pity you from the bottom of my heart!"
After that extraordinary outburst of feeling, she took up her work with one 
hand, and signed to me with the other to leave her.
I bowed to her in silence, and went out.
I had entered the house far from feeling sure of the course I ought to take in 
the future. I left the house positively resolved, come what might of it, to 
discover the secret which the mother and son were hiding from me. As to the 
question of the name, I saw it now in the light in which I ought to have seen it 
from the first. If Mrs. Macallan had been twice married (as I had rashly chosen 
to suppose), she would certainly have shown some signs of recognition when she 
heard me addressed by her first husband's name. Where all else was mystery, 
there was no mystery here. Whatever his reasons might be, Eustace had assuredly 
married me under an assumed name.
Approaching the door of our lodgings, I saw my husband walking backward and 
forward before it, evidently waiting for my return. If he asked me the question, 
I decided to tell him frankly where I had been, and what had passed between his 
mother and myself.
He hurried to meet me with signs of disturbance in his face and manner.
"I have a favor to ask of you, Valeria," he said. "Do you mind returning with me 
to London by the next train?"
I looked at him. In the popular phrase, I could hardly believe my own ears.
"It's a matter of business," he went on, "of no interest to any one but myself, 
and it requires my presence in London. You don't wish to sail just yet, as I 
understand? I can't leave you here by yourself. Have you any objection to going 
to London for a day or two?"
I made no objection. I too was eager to go back.
In London I could obtain the legal opinion which would tell me whether I were 
lawfully married to Eustace or not. In London I should be within reach of the 
help and advice of my father's faithful old clerk. I could confide in Benjamin 
as I could confide in no one else. Dearly as I loved my uncle Starkweather, I 
shrank from communicating with him in my present need. His wife had told me that 
I made a bad beginning when I signed the wrong name in the marriage register. 
Shall I own it? My pride shrank from acknowledging, before the honeymoon was 
over, that his wife was right.



In two hours more we were on the railway again. Ah, what a contrast that second 
journey presented to the first! On our way to Ramsgate everybody could see that 
we were a newly wedded couple. On our way to London nobody noticed us; nobody 
would have doubted that we had been married for years.
We went to a private hotel in the neighborhood of Portland Place.
After breakfast the next morning Eustace announced that he must leave me to 
attend to his business. I had previously mentioned to him that I had some 
purchases to make in London. He was quite willing to let me go out alone, on the 
condition that I should take a carriage provided by the hotel.
My heart was heavy that morning: I felt the unacknowledged estrangement that had 
grown up between us very keenly. My husband opened the door to go out, and came 
back to kiss me before he left me by myself. That little after-thought of 
tenderness touched me. Acting on the impulse of the moment, I put my arm round 
his neck, and held him to me gently.
"My darling," I said, "give me all your confidence. I know that you love me. 
Show that you can trust me too."
He sighed bitterly, and drew back from me--in sorrow, not in anger.
"I thought we had agreed, Valeria, not to return to that subject again," he 
said. "You only distress yourself and distress me."
He left the room abruptly, as if he dare not trust himself to say more. It is 
better not to dwell on what I felt after this last repulse. I ordered the 
carriage at once. I was eager to find a refuge from my own thoughts in movement 
and change.
I drove to the shops first, and made the purchases which I had mentioned to 
Eustace by way of giving a reason for going out. Then I devoted myself to the 
object which I really had at heart. I went to old Benjamin's little villa, in 
the by-ways of St. John's Wood.
As soon as he had got over the first surprise of seeing me, he noticed that I 
looked pale and care-worn. I confessed at once that I was in trouble. We sat 
down together by the bright fireside in his little library (Benjamin, as far as 
his means would allow, was a great collector of books), and there I told my old 
friend, frankly and truly, all that I have told here.
He was too distressed to say much. He fervently pressed my hand; he fervently 
thanked God that my father had not lived to hear what he had heard. Then, after 
a pause, he repeated my mother-in-law's name to himself in a doubting, 
questioning tone. "Macallan?" he said. "Macallan? Where have I heard that name? 
Why does it sound as if it wasn't strange to me?"
He gave up pursuing the lost recollection, and asked, very earnestly, what he 
could do for me. I answered that he could help me, in the first place, to put an 
end to the doubt--an unendurable doubt to me--whether I were lawfully married or 
not. His energy of the old days when he had conducted my father's business 
showed itself again the moment I said those words.
"Your carriage is at the door, my dear," he answered. "Come with me to my own 
lawyer, without wasting another moment."
We drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
At my request Benjamin put my case to the lawyer as the case of a friend in whom 
I was interested. The answer was given without hesitation. I had married, 
honestly believing my husband's name to be the name under which I had known him. 
The witnesses to my marriage--my uncle, my aunt, and Benjamin--had acted, as I 
had acted, in perfect good faith. Under those circumstances, there was no doubt 
about the law. I was legally married. Macallan or Woodville, I was his wife.
This decisive answer relieved me of a heavy anxiety. I accepted my old friend's 
invitation to return with him to St. John's Wood, and to make my luncheon at his 
early dinner.
On our way back I reverted to the one other subject which was now uppermost in 
my mind. I reiterated my resolution to discover why Eustace had not married me 
under the name that was really his own.
My companion shook his head, and entreated me to consider well beforehand what I 
proposed doing. His advice to me--so strangely do extremes meet!--was my 
mother-in-law's advice, repeated almost word for word. "Leave things as they 
are, my dear. In the interest of your own peace of mind be satisfied with your 
husband's affection. You know that you are his wife, and you know that he loves 
you. Surely that is enough?"
I had but one answer to this. Life, on such conditions as my good friend had 
just stated, would be simply unendurable to me. Nothing could alter my 
resolution--for this plain reason, that nothing could reconcile me to living 
with my husband on the terms on which we were living now. It only rested with 
Benjamin to say whether he would give a helping hand to his master's daughter or 
not.
The old man's answer was thoroughly characteristic of him.
"Mention what you want of me, my dear," was all he said.
We were then passing a street in the neighborhood of Portman Square. I was on 
the point of speaking again, when the words were suspended on my lips. I saw my 
husband.
He was just descending the steps of a house--as if leaving it after a visit. His 
eyes were on the ground: he did not look up when the-carriage passed. As the 
servant closed the door behind him, I noticed that the number of the house was 
Sixteen. At the next corner I saw the name of the street. It was Vivian Place.
"Do you happen to know who lives at Number Sixteen Vivian Place?" I inquired of 
my companion.
Benjamin started. My question was certainly a strange one, after what he had 
just said to me.
"No," he replied. "Why do you ask?"
"I have just seen Eustace leaving that house."
"Well, my dear, and what of that?"
"My mind is in a bad way, Benjamin. Everything my husband does that I don't 
understand rouses my suspicion now."
Benjamin lifted his withered old hands, and let them drop on his knees again in 
mute lamentation over me.
"I tell you again," I went on, "my life is unendurable to me. I won't answer for 
what I may do if I am left much longer to live in doubt of the one man on earth 
whom I love. You have had experience of the world. Suppose you were shut out 
from Eustace's confidence, as I am? Suppose you were as fond of him as I am, and 
felt your position as bitterly as I feel it--what would you do?"
The question was plain. Benjamin met it with a plain answer.
"I think I should find my way, my dear, to some intimate friend of your 
husband's," he said, "and make a few discreet inquiries in that quarter first."
Some intimate friend of my husband's? I considered with myself. There was but 
one friend of his whom I knew of--my uncle's correspondent, Major Fitz-David. My 
heart beat fast as the name recurred to my memory. Suppose I followed Benjamin's 
advice? Suppose I applied to Major Fitz-David? Even if he, too, refused to 
answer my questions, my position would not be more helpless than it was now. I 
determined to make the attempt. The only difficulty in the way, so far, was to 
discover the Major's address. I had given back his letter to Doctor 
Starkweather, at my uncle's own request. I remembered that the address from 
which the Major wrote was somewhere in London--and I remembered no more.
"Thank you, old friend; you have given me an idea already," I said to Benjamin. 
"Have you got a Directory in your house?"
"No, my dear," he rejoined, looking very much puzzled. "But I can easily send 
out and borrow one."
We returned to the villa. The servant was sent at once to the nearest 
stationer's to borrow a Directory. She returned with the book just as we sat 
down to dinner. Searching for the Major's name under the letter F, I was 
startled by a new discovery.
"Benjamin!" I said. "This is a strange coincidence. Look here!"
He looked where I pointed. Major Fitz-David's address was Number Sixteen Vivian 
Place--the very house which I had seen my husband leaving as we passed in the 
carriage!



CHAPTER VII.
ON THE WAY TO THE MAJOR.



"YES, said Benjamin. "It is a coincidence certainly. Still--"
He stopped and looked at me. He seemed a little doubtful how I might receive 
what he had it in his mind to say to me next.
"Go on," I said.
"Still, my dear, I see nothing suspicious in what has happened," he resumed. "To 
my mind it is quite natural that your husband, being in London, should pay a 
visit to one of his friends. And it's equally natural that we should pass 
through Vivian Place on our way back here. This seems to be the reasonable view. 
What do you say?"
"I have told you already that my mind is in a bad way about Eustace," I 
answered. "I say there is some motive at the bottom of his visit to Major 
Fitz-David. It is not an ordinary call. I am firmly convinced it is not an 
ordinary call!"
"Suppose we get on with our dinner?" said Benjamin, resignedly. "Here is a loin 
of mutton, my dear--an ordinary loin of mutton. Is there anything suspicious in 
that? Very well, then. Show me you have confidence in the mutton; please eat. 
There's the wine, again. No mystery, Valeria, in that claret--I'll take my oath 
it's nothing but innocent juice of the grape. If we can't believe in anything 
else, let's believe in juice of the grape. Your good health, my dear."
I adapted myself to the old man's genial humor as readily as I could. We ate and 
we drank, and we talked of by-gone days. For a little while I was almost happy 
in the company of my fatherly old friend. Why was I not old too? Why had I not 
done with love, with its certain miseries, its transient delights, its cruel 
losses, its bitterly doubtful gains? The last autumn flowers in the window 
basked brightly in the last of the autumn sunlight. Benjamin's little dog 
digested his dinner in perfect comfort on the hearth. The parrot in the next 
house screeched his vocal accomplishments cheerfully. I don't doubt that it is a 
great privilege to be a human being. But may it not be the happier destiny to be 
an animal or a plant?
The brief respite was soon over; all my anxieties came back. I was once more a 
doubting, discontented, depressed creature when I rose to say good-by.
"Promise, my dear, you will do nothing rash, "said Benjamin, as he opened the 
door for me.
"Is it rash to go to Major Fitz-David?" I asked.
"Yes--if you go by yourself. You don't know what sort of man he is; you don't 
know how he may receive you. Let me try first, and pave the way, as the saying 
is. Trust my experience, my dear. In matters of this sort there is nothing like 
paving the way."
I considered a moment. It was due to my good friend to consider before I said 
No.
Reflection decided me on taking the responsibility, whatever it might be, upon 
my own shoulders. Good or bad, compassionate or cruel, the Major was a man. A 
woman's influence was the safest influence to trust with him, where the end to 
be gained was such an end as I had in view. It was not easy to say this to 
Benjamin without the danger of mortifying him. I made an appointment with the 
old man to call on me the next morning at the hotel, and talk the matter over 
again. Is it very disgraceful to me to add that I privately determined (if the 
thing could be accomplished) to see Major Fitz-David in the interval?
"Do nothing rash, my dear. In your own interests, do nothing rash!"
Those were Benjamin's last words when we parted for the day.



I found Eustace waiting for me in our sitting-room at the hotel. His spirits 
seemed to have revived since I had seen him last. He advanced to meet me 
cheerfully, with an open sheet of paper in his hand.
"My business is settled, Valeria, sooner than I had expected," he began, gayly. 
"Are your purchases all completed, fair lady? Are you free too?"
I had learned already (God help me!) to distrust his fits of gayety. I asked, 
cautiously,
"Do you mean free for to-day?"
"Free for to-day, and to-morrow, and next week, and next month--and next year 
too, for all I know to the contrary," he answered, putting his arm boisterously 
round my waist. "Look here!"
He lifted the open sheet of paper which I had noticed in his hand, and held it 
for me to read. It was a telegram to the sailing-master of the yacht, informing 
him that we had arranged to return to Ramsgate that evening, and that we should 
be ready to sail for the Mediterranean with the next tide.
"I only waited for your return," said Eustace, "to send the telegram to the 
office."
He crossed the room as he spoke to ring the bell. I stopped him.
"I am afraid I can't go to Ramsgate to-day," I said.
"Why not?" he asked, suddenly changing his tone, and speaking sharply.
I dare say it will seem ridiculous to some people, but it is really true that he 
shook my resolution to go to Major Fitz-David when he put his arm round me. Even 
a mere passing caress from him stole away my heart, and softly tempted me to 
yield. But the ominous alteration in his tone made another woman of me. I felt 
once more, and felt more strongly than ever, that in my critical position it was 
useless to stand still, and worse than useless to draw back.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," I answered. It is impossible for me (as I told 
you at Ramsgate) to be ready to sail at a moment's notice. I want time."
"What for?"
Not only his tone, but his look, when he put that second question, jarred on 
every nerve in me. He roused in my mind--I can't tell how or why--an angry sense 
of the indignity that he had put upon his wife in marrying her under a false 
name. Fearing that I should answer rashly, that I should say something which my 
better sense might regret, if I spoke at that moment, I said nothing. Women 
alone can estimate what it cost me to be silent. And men alone can understand 
how irritating my silence must have been to my husband.
"You want time?" he repeated. "I ask you again--what for?"
My self-control, pushed to its extremest limits, failed me. The rash reply flew 
out of my lips, like a bird set free from a cage.
"I want time," I said, "to accustom myself to my right name."
He suddenly stepped up to me with a dark look.
"What do you mean by your 'right name?'"
"Surely you know," I answered. "I once thought I was Mrs. Woodville. I have now 
discovered that I am Mrs. Macallan."
He started back at the sound of his own name as if I had struck him--he started 
back, and turned so deadly pale that I feared he was going to drop at my feet in 
a swoon. Oh, my tongue! my tongue! Why had I not controlled my miserable, 
mischievous woman's tongue!
"I didn't mean to alarm you, Eustace," I said. "I spoke at random. Pray forgive 
me."
He waved his hand impatiently, as if my penitent words were tangible 
things--ruffling, worrying things, like flies in summer--which he was putting 
away from him.
"What else have you discovered?" he asked, in low, stern tones.
"Nothing, Eustace."
"Nothing?" He paused as he repeated the word, and passed his hand over his 
forehead in a weary way. "Nothing, of course," he resumed, speaking to himself, 
"or she would not be here." He paused once more, and looked at me searchingly. 
"Don't say again what you said just now," he went on. "For your own sake, 
Valeria, as well as for mine." He dropped into the nearest chair, and said no 
more.
I certainly heard the warning; but the only words which really produced an 
impression on my mind were the words preceding it, which he had spoken to 
himself. He had said: "Nothing, of course, or she could not be here." If I had 
found out some other truth besides the truth about the name, would it have 
prevented me from ever returning to my husband? Was that what he meant? Did the 
sort of discovery that he contemplated mean something so dreadful that it would 
have parted us at once and forever? I stood by his chair in silence, and tried 
to find the answer to those terrible questions in his face. It used to speak to 
me so eloquently when it spoke of his love. It told me nothing now.
He sat for some time without looking at me, lost in his own thoughts. Then he 
rose on a sudden and took his hat.
"The friend who lent me the yacht is in town," he said. "I suppose I had better 
see him, and say our plans are changed." He tore up the telegram with an air of 
sullen resignation as he spoke. "You are evidently determined not to go to sea 
with me," he resumed. "We had better give it up. I don't see what else is to be 
done. Do you?"
His tone was almost a tone of contempt. I was too depressed about myself, too 
alarmed about him, to resent it.
"Decide as you think best, Eustace," I said, sadly. "Every way, the prospect 
seems a hopeless one. As long as I am shut out from your confidence, it matters 
little whether we live on land or at sea--we cannot live happily."
"If you could control your curiosity." he answered, sternly, "we might live 
happily enough. I thought I had married a woman who was superior to the vulgar 
failings of her sex. A good wife should know better than to pry into affairs of 
her husband's with which she had no concern."
Surely it was hard to bear this? However, I bore it.
"Is it no concern of mine?" I asked, gently, "when I find that my husband has 
not married me under his family name? Is it no concern of mine when I hear your 
mother say, in so many words, that she pities your wife? It is hard, Eustace, to 
accuse me of curiosity because I cannot accept the unendurable position in which 
you have placed me. Your cruel silence is a blight on my happiness and a threat 
to my future. Your cruel silence is estranging us from each other at the 
beginning of our married life. And you blame me for feeling this? You tell me I 
am prying into affairs which are yours only? They are not yours only: I have my 
interest in them too. Oh, my darling, why do you trifle with our love and our 
confidence in each other? Why do you keep me in the dark?"
He answered with a stern and pitiless brevity,
"For your own good."
I turned away from him in silence. He was treating me like a child.
He followed me. Putting one hand heavily on my shoulder, he forced me to face 
him once more.
"Listen to this," he said. "What I am now going to say to you I say for the 
first and last time. Valeria! if you ever discover what I am now keeping from 
your knowledge--from that moment you live a life of torture; your tranquillity 
is gone. Your days will be days of terror; your nights will be full of horrid 
dreams--through no fault of mine, mind! through no fault of mine! Every day of 
your life you will feel some new distrust, some growing fear of me, and you will 
be doing me the vilest injustice all the time. On my faith as a Christian, on my 
honor as a man, if you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end to 
your happiness for the rest of your life! Think seriously of what I have said to 
you; you will have time to reflect. I am going to tell my friend that our plans 
for the Mediterranean are given up. I shall not be back before the evening." He 
sighed, and looked at me with unutterable sadness. "I love you, Valeria," he 
said. "In spite of all that has passed, as God is my witness, I love you more 
dearly than ever."
So he spoke. So he left me.
I must write the truth about myself, however strange it may appear. I don't 
pretend to be able to analyze my own motives; I don't pretend even to guess how 
other women might have acted in my place. It is true of me, that my husband's 
terrible warning--all the more terrible in its mystery and its 
vagueness--produced no deterrent effect on my mind: it only stimulated my 
resolution to discover what he was hiding from me. He had not been gone two 
minutes before I rang the bell and ordered the carriage, to take me to Major 
Fitz-David's house in Vivian Place.
Walking to and fro while I was waiting--I was in such a fever of excitement that 
it was impossible for me to sit still--I accidentally caught sight of myself in 
the glass.
My own face startled me, it looked so haggard and so wild. Could I present 
myself to a stranger, could I hope to produce the necessary impression in my 
favor, looking as I looked at that moment? For all I knew to the contrary, my 
whole future might depend upon the effect which I produced on Major Fitz-David 
at first sight. I rang the bell again, and sent a message to one of the 
chambermaids to follow me to my room.
I had no maid of my own with me: the stewardess of the yacht would have acted as 
my attendant if we had held to our first arrangement. It mattered little, so 
long as I had a woman to help me. The chambermaid appeared. I can give no better 
idea of the disordered and desperate condition of my mind at that time than by 
owning that I actually consulted this perfect stranger on the question of my 
personal appearance. She was a middle-aged woman, with a large experience of the 
world and its wickedness written legibly on her manner and on her face. I put 
money into the woman's hand, enough of it to surprise her. She thanked me with a 
cynical smile, evidently placing her own evil interpretation on my motive for 
bribing her.
"What can I do for you, ma'am?" she asked, in a confidential whisper. "Don't 
speak loud! there is somebody in the next room."
"I want to look my best," I said, "and I have sent for you to help me."
"I understand, ma'am."
"What do you understand?"
She nodded her head significantly, and whispered to me again. "Lord bless you, 
I'm used to this!" she said. "There is a gentleman in the case. Don't mind me, 
ma'am. It's a way I have. I mean no harm." She stopped, and looked at me 
critically. "I wouldn't change my dress if I were you," she went on. "The color 
becomes you."
It was too late to resent the woman's impertinence. There was no help for it but 
to make use of her. Besides, she was right about the dress. It was of a delicate 
maize-color, prettily trimmed with lace. I could wear nothing which suited me 
better. My hair, however, stood in need of some skilled attention. The 
chambermaid rearranged it with a ready hand which showed that she was no 
beginner in the art of dressing hair. She laid down the combs and brushes, and 
looked at me; then looked at the toilet-table, searching for something which she 
apparently failed to find.
"Where do you keep it?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Look at your complexion, ma'am. You will frighten him if he sees you like that. 
A touch of color you must have. Where do you keep it? What! you haven't got it? 
you never use it? Dear, dear, dear me!"
For a moment surprise fairly deprived her of her self-possession. Recovering 
herself, she begged permission to leave me for a minute. I let her go, knowing 
what her errand was. She came back with a box of paint and powders; and I said 
nothing to check her. I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my 
cheeks a false color, my eyes a false brightness--and I never shrank from it. 
No! I let the odious conceit go on; I even admired the extraordinary delicacy 
and dexterity with which it was all done. "Anything" (I thought to myself, in 
the madness of that miserable time) "so long as it helps me to win the Major's 
confidence! Anything, so long as I discover what those last words of my 
husband's really mean!"
The transformation of my face was accomplished. The chambermaid pointed with her 
wicked forefinger in the direction of the glass.
"Bear in mind, ma'am, what you looked like when you sent for me," she said. "And 
just see for yourself how you look now. You're the prettiest woman (of your 
style) in London. Ah what a thing pearl-powder is, when one knows how to use 
it!"



CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRIEND OF THE WOMEN.



I FIND it impossible to describe my sensations while the carriage was taking me 
to Major Fitz-David's house. I doubt, indeed, if I really felt or thought at 
all, in the true sense of those words.
From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the chambermaid I 
seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity--to have stepped 
out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and 
anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might 
place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a 
critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it 
might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave 
my coming interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning confidence 
in myself, and a blind faith in him. Now neither the past nor the future 
troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the present. I looked at the shops as we 
drove by them, and at the other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed--yes, 
and enjoyed--the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers on the 
pavement cast on me. I said to myself, "This looks well for my prospect of 
making a friend of the Major!" When we drew up at the door in Vivian Place, it 
is no exaggeration to say that I had but one anxiety--anxiety to find the Major 
at home.
The door was opened by a servant out of livery, an old man who looked as if he 
might have been a soldier in his earlier days. He eyed me with a grave 
attention, which relaxed little by little into sly approval. I asked for Major 
Fitz-David. The answer was not altogether encouraging: the man was not sure 
whether his master were at home or not.
I gave him my card. My cards, being part of my wedding outfit, necessarily had 
the false name printed on them--Mrs. Eustace Woodville. The servant showed me 
into a front room on the ground-floor, and disappeared with my card in his hand.
Looking about me, I noticed a door in the wall opposite the window, 
communicating with some inner room. The door was not of the ordinary kind. It 
fitted into the thickness of the partition wall, and worked in grooves. Looking 
a little nearer, I saw that it had not been pulled out so as completely to close 
the doorway. Only the merest chink was left; but it was enough to convey to my 
ears all that passed in the next room.
"What did you say, Oliver, when she asked for me?" inquired a man's voice, 
pitched cautiously in a low key.
"I said I was not sure you were at home, sir," answered the voice of the servant 
who had let me in.
There was a pause. The first speaker was evidently Major Fitz-David himself. I 
waited to hear more.
"I think I had better not see her, Oliver," the Major's voice resumed.
"Very good, sir."
"Say I have gone out, and you don't know when I shall be back again. Beg the 
lady to write, if she has any business with me."
"Yes, sir."
"Stop, Oliver!"
Oliver stopped. There was another and longer pause. Then the master resumed the 
examination of the man.
"Is she young, Oliver?"
"Yes, sir."
"And--pretty?"
"Better than pretty, sir, to my thinking."
"Aye? aye? What you call a fine woman--eh, Oliver?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Tall?"
"Nearly as tall as I am, Major."
"Aye? aye? aye? A good figure?"
"As slim as a sapling, sir, and as upright as a dart."
"On second thoughts, I am at home, Oliver. Show her in! show her in!"
So far, one thing at least seemed to be clear. I had done well in sending for 
the chambermaid. What would Oliver's report of me have been if I had presented 
myself to him with my colorless cheeks and my ill-dressed hair?
The servant reappeared, and conducted me to the inner room. Major Fitz-David 
advanced to welcome me. What was the Major like?
Well, he was like a well-preserved old gentleman of, say, sixty years old, 
little and lean, and chiefly remarkable by the extraordinary length of his nose. 
After this feature, I noticed next his beautiful brown wig; his sparkling little 
gray eyes; his rosy complexion; his short military whisker, dyed to match his 
wig; his white teeth and his winning smile; his smart blue frock-coat, with a 
camellia in the button-hole; and his splendid ring, a ruby, flashing on his 
little finger as he courteously signed to me to take a chair.
"Dear Mrs. Woodville, how very kind of you this is! I have been longing to have 
the happiness of knowing you. Eustace is an old friend of mine. I congratulated 
him when I heard of his marriage. May I make a confession?--I envy him now I 
have seen his wife."
The future of my life was perhaps in this man's hands. I studied him 
attentively: I tried to read his character in his face.
The Major's sparkling little gray eyes softened as they looked at me; the 
Major's strong and sturdy voice dropped to its lowest and tenderest tones when 
he spoke to me; the Major's manner expressed, from the moment when I entered the 
room, a happy mixture of admiration and respect. He drew his chair close to 
mine, as if it were a privilege to be near me. He took my hand and lifted my 
glove to his lips, as if that glove were the most delicious luxury the world 
could produce. "Dear Mrs. Woodville," he said, as he softly laid my hand back on 
my lap, "bear with an old fellow who worships your enchanting sex. You really 
brighten this dull house. It is such a pleasure to see you!"
There was no need for the old gentleman to make his little confession. Women, 
children, and dogs proverbially know by instinct who the people are who really 
like them. The women had a warm friend--perhaps at one time a dangerously warm 
friend--in Major Fitz-David. I knew as much of him as that before I had settled 
myself in my chair and opened my lips to answer him.
"Thank you, Major, for your kind reception and your pretty compliment," I said, 
matching my host's easy tone as closely as the necessary restraints on my side 
would permit. "You have made your confession. May I make mine?"
Major Fitz-David lifted my hand again from my lap and drew his chair as close as 
possible to mine. I looked at him gravely and tried to release my hand. Major 
Fitz-David declined to let go of it, and proceeded to tell me why.
"I have just heard you speak for the first time," he said. "I am under the charm 
of your voice. Dear Mrs. Woodville, bear with an old fellow who is under the 
charm! Don't grudge me my innocent little pleasures. Lend me--I wish I could say 
give me--this pretty hand. I am such an admirer of pretty hands! I can listen so 
much better with a pretty hand in mine. The ladies indulge my weakness. Please 
indulge me too. Yes? And what were you going to say?"
"I was going to say, Major, that I felt particularly sensible of your kind 
welcome because, as it happens, I have a favor to ask of you."
I was conscious, while I spoke, that I was approaching the object of my visit a 
little too abruptly. But Major Fitz-David's admiration rose from one climax to 
another with such alarming rapidity that I felt the importance of administering 
a practical check to it. I trusted to those ominous words, "a favor to ask of 
you," to administer the check, and I did not trust in vain. My aged admirer 
gently dropped my hand, and, with all possible politeness, changed the subject.
"The favor is granted, of course!" he said. "And now, tell me, how is our dear 
Eustace?"
"Anxious and out of spirits." I answered.
"Anxious and out of spirits!" repeated the Major. "The enviable man who is 
married to You anxious and out of spirits? Monstrous! Eustace fairly disgusts 
me. I shall take him off the list of my friends."
"In that case, take me off the list with him, Major. I am in wretched spirits 
too. You are my husband's old friend. I may acknowledge to you that our married 
life is just now not quite a happy one."
Major Fitz-David lifted his eyebrows (dyed to match his whiskers) in polite 
surprise.
"Already!" he exclaimed. "What can Eustace be made of? Has he no appreciation of 
beauty and grace? Is he the most insensible of living beings?"
"He is the best and dearest of men," I answered. "But there is some dreadful 
mystery in his past life--"
I could get no further; Major Fitz-David deliberately stopped me. He did it with 
the smoothest politeness, on the surface. But I saw a look in his bright little 
eyes which said, plainly, "If you will venture on delicate ground, madam, don't 
ask me to accompany you."
"My charming friend!" he exclaimed. "May I call you my charming friend? You 
have--among a thousand other delightful qualities which I can see already--a 
vivid imagination. Don't let it get the upper hand. Take an old fellow's advice; 
don't let it get the upper hand! What can I offer you, dear Mrs. Woodville? A 
cup of tea?"
"Call me by my right name, sir," I answered, boldly. "I have made a discovery. I 
know as well as you do that my name is Macallan."
The Major started, and looked at me very attentively. His manner became grave, 
his tone changed completely, when he spoke next.
"May I ask," he said, "if you have communicated to your husband the discovery 
which you have just mentioned to me?"
"Certainly!" I answered. "I consider that my husband owes me an explanation. I 
have asked him to tell me what his extraordinary conduct means--and he has 
refused, in language that frightens me. I have appealed to his mother--and she 
has refused to explain, in language that humiliates me. Dear Major Fitz-David, I 
have no friends to take my part: I have nobody to come to but you! Do me the 
greatest of all favors--tell me why your friend Eustace has married me under a 
false name!"
"Do me the greatest of all favors;" answered the Major. "Don't ask me to say a 
word about it."
He looked, in spite of his unsatisfactory reply, as if he really felt for me. I 
determined to try my utmost powers of persuasion; I resolved not to be beaten at 
the first repulse.
"I must ask you," I said. "Think of my position. How can I live, knowing what I 
know--and knowing no more? I would rather hear the most horrible thing you can 
tell me than be condemned (as I am now) to perpetual misgiving and perpetual 
suspense. I love my husband with all my heart; but I cannot live with him on 
these terms: the misery of it would drive me mad. I am only a woman, Major. I 
can only throw myself on your kindness. Don't--pray, pray don't keep me in the 
dark!"
I could say no more. In the reckless impulse of the moment I snatched up his 
hand and raised it to my lips. The gallant old gentleman started as if I had 
given him an electric shock.
"My dear, dear lady!" he exclaimed, "I can't tell you how I feel for you! You 
charm me, you overwhelm me, you touch me to the heart. What can I say? What can 
I do? I can only imitate your admirable frankness, your fearless candor. You 
have told me what your position is. Let me tell you, in my turn, how I am 
placed. Compose yourself--pray compose yourself! I have a smelling-bottle here 
at the service of the ladies. Permit me to offer it."
He brought me the smelling-bottle; he put a little stool under my feet; he 
entreated me to take time enough to compose myself. "Infernal fool!" I heard him 
say to himself, as he considerately turned away from me for a few moments. "If I 
had been her husband, come what might of it, I would have told her the truth!"
Was he referring to Eustace? And was he going to do what he would have done in 
my husband's place?--was he really going to tell me the truth?
The idea had barely crossed my mind when I was startled by a loud and peremptory 
knocking at the street door. The Major stopped and listened attentively. In a 
few moments the door was opened, and the rustling of a woman's dress was plainly 
audible in the hall. The Major hurried to the door of the room with the activity 
of a young man. He was too late. The door was violently opened from the outer 
side, just as he got to it. The lady of the rustling dress burst into the room.



CHAPTER IX.
THE DEFEAT OF THE MAJOR.



MAJOR FITZ-DAVID'S visitor proved to be a plump, round-eyed overdressed girl, 
with a florid complexion and straw colored hair. After first fixing on me a 
broad stare of astonishment, she pointedly addressed her apologies for intruding 
on us to the Major alone. The creature evidently believed me to be the last new 
object of the old gentleman's idolatry; and she took no pains to disguise her 
jealous resentment on discovering us together. Major Fitz-David set matters 
right in his own irresistible way. He kissed the hand of the overdressed girl as 
devotedly as he had kissed mine; he told her she was looking charmingly. Then he 
led her, with his happy mixture of admiration and respect, back to the door by 
which she had entered--a second door communicating directly with the hall.
"No apology is necessary, my dear," he said. "This lady is with me on a matter 
of business. You will find your singing-master waiting for you upstairs. Begin 
your lesson; and I will join you in a few minutes. Au revoir, my charming 
pupil--au revoir."
The young lady answered this polite little speech in a whisper--with her round 
eyes fixed distrustfully on me while she spoke. The door closed on her. Major 
Fitz-David was at liberty to set matters right with me, in my turn.
"I call that young person one of my happy discoveries;" said the old gentleman, 
complacently. "She possesses, I don't hesitate to say, the finest soprano voice 
in Europe. Would you believe it, I met with her at the railway station. She was 
behind the counter in a refreshment-room, poor innocent, rinsing wine-glasses, 
and singing over her work. Good Heavens, such singing! Her upper notes 
electrified me. I said to myself; 'Here is a born prima donna--I will bring her 
out!' She is the third I have brought out in my time. I shall take her to Italy 
when her education is sufficiently advanced, and perfect her at Milan. In that 
unsophisticated girl, my dear lady, you see one of the future Queens of Song. 
Listen! She is beginning her scales. What a voice! Brava! Brava! Bravissima!"
The high soprano notes of the future Queen of Song rang through the house as he 
spoke. Of the loudness of the young lady's voice there could be no sort of 
doubt. The sweetness and the purity of it admitted, in my opinion, of 
considerable dispute.
Having said the polite words which the occasion rendered necessary, I ventured 
to recall Major Fitz-David to the subject in discussion between us when his 
visitor had entered the room. The Major was very unwilling to return to the 
perilous topic on which we had just touched when the interruption occurred. He 
beat time with his forefinger to the singing upstairs; he asked me about my 
voice, and whether I sang; he remarked that life would be intolerable to him 
without Love and Art. A man in my place would have lost all patience, and would 
have given up the struggle in disgust. Being a woman, and having my end in view, 
my resolution was invincible. I fairly wore out the Major's resistance, and 
compelled him to surrender at discretion. It is only justice to add that, when 
he did make up his mind to speak to me again of Eustace, he spoke frankly, and 
spoke to the point.
"I have known your husband," he began, "since the time when he was a boy. At a 
certain period of his past life a terrible misfortune fell upon him. The secret 
of that misfortune is known to his friends, and is religiously kept by his 
friends. It is the secret that he is keeping from You. He will never tell it to 
you as long as he lives. And he has bound me not to tell it, under a promise 
given on my word of honor. You wished, dear Mrs. Woodville, to be made 
acquainted with my position toward Eustace. There it is!"
"You persist in calling me Mrs. Woodville," I said.
"Your husband wishes me to persist," the Major answered. "He assumed the name of 
Woodville, fearing to give his own name, when he first called at your uncle's 
house. He will now acknowledge no other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do 
what we do--you must give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the 
world in other respects: in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed as he 
can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that I think he was wrong 
in courting and marrying you under his false name. He trusted his honor and his 
happiness to your keeping in making you his--wife. Why should he not trust the 
story of his troubles to you as well? His mother quite shares my opinion in this 
matter. You must not blame her for refusing to admit you into her confidence 
after your marriage: it was then too late. Before your marriage she did all she 
could do--without betraying secrets which, as a good mother, she was bound to 
respect--to induce her son to act justly toward you. I commit no indiscretion 
when I tell you that she refused to sanction your marriage mainly for the reason 
that Eustace refused to follow her advice, and to tell you what his position 
really was. On my part I did all I could to support Mrs. Macallan in the course 
that she took. When Eustace wrote to tell me that he had engaged himself to 
marry a niece of my good friend Doctor Starkweather, and that he had mentioned 
me as his reference, I wrote back to warn him that I would have nothing to do 
with the affair unless he revealed the whole truth about himself to his future 
wife. He refused to listen to me, as he had refused to listen to his mother; and 
he held me at the same time to my promise to keep his secret. When Starkweather 
wrote to me, I had no choice but to involve myself in a deception of which I 
thoroughly disapproved, or to answer in a tone so guarded and so brief as to 
stop the correspondence at the outset. I chose the last alternative; and I fear 
I have offended my good old friend. You now see the painful position in which I 
am placed. To add to the difficulties of that situation, Eustace came here this 
very day to warn me to be on my guard, in case of your addressing to me the very 
request which you have just made! He told me that you had met with his mother, 
by an unlucky accident, and that you had discovered the family name. He declared 
that he had traveled to London for the express purpose of speaking to me 
personally on this serious subject. 'I know your weakness,' he said, 'where 
women are concerned. Valeria is aware that you are my old friend. She will 
certainly write to you; she may even be bold enough to make her way into your 
house. Renew your promise to keep the great calamity of my life a secret, on 
your honor and on your oath. 'Those were his words, as nearly as I can remember 
them. I tried to treat the thing lightly; I ridi culed the absurdly theatrical 
notion of 'renewing my promise,' and all the rest of it. Quite useless! He 
refused to leave me; he reminded me of his unmerited sufferings, poor fellow, in 
the past time. It ended in his bursting into tears. You love him, and so do I. 
Can you wonder that I let him have his way? The result is that I am doubly bound 
to tell you nothing, by the most sacred promise that a man can give. My dear 
lady, I cordially side with you in this matter; I long to relieve your 
anxieties. But what can I do?"
He stopped, and waited--gravely waited--to hear my reply.
I had listened from beginning to end without interrupting him. The extraordinary 
change in his manner, and in his way of expressing himself, while he was 
speaking of Eustace, alarmed me as nothing had alarmed me yet. How terrible (I 
thought to myself) must this untold story be, if the mere act of referring to it 
makes light-hearted Major Fitz-David speak seriously and sadly, never smiling, 
never paying me a compliment, never even noticing the singing upstairs! My heart 
sank in me as I drew that startling conclusion. For the first time since I had 
entered the house I was at the end of my resources; I knew neither what to say 
nor what to do next.
And yet I kept my seat. Never had the resolution to discover what my husband was 
hiding from me been more firmly rooted in my mind than it was at that moment! I 
cannot account for the extraordinary inconsistency in my character which this 
confession implies. I can only describe the facts as they really were.
The singing went on upstairs. Major Fitz-David still waited impenetrably to hear 
what I had to say--to know what I resolved on doing next.
Before I had decided what to say or what to do, another domestic incident 
happened. In plain words, another knocking announced a new visitor at the house 
door. On this occasion there was no rustling of a woman's dress in the hall. On 
this occasion only the old servant entered the room, carrying a magnificent 
nosegay in his hand. "With Lady Clarinda's kind regards. To remind Major 
Fitz-David of his appointment." Another lady! This time a lady with a title. A 
great lady who sent her flowers and her messages without condescending to 
concealment. The Major--first apologizing to me--wrote a few lines of 
acknowledgment, and sent them out to the messenger. When the door was closed 
again he carefully selected one of the choicest flowers in the nosegay. "May I 
ask," he said, presenting the flower to me with his best grace, "whether you now 
understand the delicate position in which I am placed between your husband and 
yourself?"
The little interruption caused by the appearance of the nosegay had given a new 
impulse to my thoughts, and had thus helped, in some degree, to restore me to 
myself. I was able at last to satisfy Major Fitz-David that his considerate and 
courteous explanation had not been thrown away upon me.
"I thank you, most sincerely, Major," I said "You have convinced me that I must 
not ask you to forget, on my account, the promise which you have given to my 
husband. It is a sacred promise, which I too am bound to respect--I quite 
understand that."
The Major drew a long breath of relief, and patted me on the shoulder in high 
approval of what I had said to him.
"Admirably expressed!" he rejoined, recovering his light-hearted looks and his 
lover-like ways all in a moment. "My dear lady, you have the gift of sympathy; 
you see exactly how I am situated. Do you know, you remind me of my charming 
Lady Clarinda. She has the gift of sympathy, and sees exactly how I am situated. 
I should so enjoy introducing you to each other," said the Major, plunging his 
long nose ecstatically into Lady Clarinda's flowers.
I had my end still to gain; and, being (as you will have discovered by this 
time) the most obstinate of living women, I still kept that end in view.
"I shall be delighted to meet Lady Clarinda," I replied. "In the meantime--"
"I will get up a little dinner," proceeded the Major, with a burst of 
enthusiasm. "You and I and Lady Clarinda. Our young prima donna shall come in 
the evening, and sing to us. Suppose we draw out the menu? My sweet friend, what 
is your favorite autumn soup?"
"In the meantime," I persisted, "to return to what we were speaking of just 
now--"
The Major's smile vanished; the Major's hand dropped the pen destined to 
immortalize the name of my favorite autumn soup.
"Must we return to that?" he asked, piteously.
"Only for a moment," I said.
"You remind me," pursued Major Fitz-David, shaking his head sadly, "of another 
charming friend of mine--a French friend--Madame Mirliflore. You are a person of 
prodigious tenacity of purpose. Madame Mirliflore is a person of prodigious 
tenacity of purpose. She happens to be in London. Shall we have her at our 
little dinner?" The Major brightened at the idea, and took up the pen again. "Do 
tell me," he said, "what is your favorite autumn soup?"
"Pardon me," I began, "we were speaking just now--"
"Oh, dear me!" cried Major Fitz-David. "Is this the other subject?"
"Yes--this is the other subject."
The Major put down his pen for the second time, and regretfully dismissed from 
his mind Madame Mirliflore and the autumn soup.
"Yes?" he said, with a patient bow and a submissive smile. "You were going to 
say--"
"I was going to say," I rejoined, "that your promise only pledges you not to 
tell the secret which my husband is keeping from me. You have given no promise 
not to answer me if I venture to ask you one or two questions."
Major Fitz-David held up his hand warningly, and cast a sly look at me out of 
his bright little gray eyes.
"Stop!" he said. "My sweet friend, stop there! I know where your questions will 
lead me, and what the result will be if I once begin to answer them. When your 
husband was here to-day he took occasion to remind me that I was as weak as 
water in the hands of a pretty woman. He is quite right. I am as weak as water; 
I can refuse nothing to a pretty woman. Dear and admirable lady, don't abuse 
your influence! don't make an old soldier false to his word of honor!"
I tried to say something here in defense of my motives. The Major clasped his 
hands entreatingly, and looked at me with a pleading simplicity wonderful to 
see.
"Why press it?" he asked. "I offer no resistance. I am a lamb--why sacrifice me? 
I acknowledge your power; I throw myself on your mercy. All the misfortunes of 
my youth and my manhood have come to me through women. I am not a bit better in 
my age--I am just as fond of the women and just as ready to be misled by them as 
ever, with one foot in the grave. Shocking, isn't it? But how true! Look at this 
mark!" He lifted a curl of his beautiful brown wig, and showed me a terrible 
scar at the side of his head. "That wound (supposed to be mortal at the time) 
was made by a pistol bullet," he proceeded. "Not received in the service of my 
country--oh dear, no! Received in the service of a much-injured lady, at the 
hands of her scoundrel of a husband, in a duel abroad. Well, she was worth it." 
He kissed his hand affectionately to the memory of the dead or absent lady, and 
pointed to a water-color drawing of a pretty country-house hanging on the 
opposite wall. "That fine estate," he proceeded, "once belonged to me. It was 
sold years and years since. And who had the money? The women--God bless them 
all!--the women. I don't regret it. If I had another estate, I have no doubt it 
would go the same way. Your adorable sex has made its pretty playthings of my 
life, my time, and my money--and welcome! The one thing I have kept to myself is 
my honor. And now that is in danger. Yes, if you put your clever little 
questions, with those lovely eyes and with that gentle voice, I know what will 
happen. You will deprive me of the last and best of all my possessions. Have I 
deserved to be treated in that way, and by you, my charming friend?--by you, of 
all people in the world? Oh, fie! fie!"
He paused and looked at me as before--the picture of artless entreaty, with his 
head a little on one side. I made another attempt to speak of the matter in 
dispute between us, from my own point of view. Major Fitz-David instantly threw 
himself prostrate on my mercy more innocently than ever.
"Ask of me anything else in the wide world," he said; "but don't ask me to be 
false to my friend. Spare me that--and there is nothing I will not do to satisfy 
you. I mean what I say, mind!" he went on, bending closer to me, and speaking 
more seriously than he had spoken yet "I think you are very hardly used. It is 
monstrous to expect that a woman, placed in your situation, will consent to be 
left for the rest of her life in the dark. No! no! if I saw you, at this moment, 
on the point of finding out for yourself what Eustace persists in hiding from 
you, I should remember that my promise, like all other promises, has its limits 
and reserves. I should consider myself bound in honor not to help you--but I 
would not lift a finger to prevent you from discovering the truth for yourself."
At last he was speaking in good earnest: he laid a strong emphasis on his 
closing words. I laid a stronger emphasis on them still by suddenly leaving my 
chair. The impulse to spring to my feet was irresistible. Major Fitz-David had 
started a new idea in my mind.
"Now we understand each other!" I said. "I will accept your own terms, Major. I 
will ask nothing of you but what you have just offered to me of your own 
accord."
"What have I offered?" he inquired, looking a little alarmed.
"Nothing that you need repent of," I answered; "nothing which is not easy for 
you to grant. May I ask a bold question? Suppose this house was mine instead of 
yours?"
"Consider it yours," cried the gallant old gentleman. "From the garret to the 
kitchen, consider it yours!"
"A thousand thanks, Major; I will consider it mine for the moment. You 
know--everybody knows--that one of a woman's many weaknesses is curiosity. 
Suppose my curiosity led me to examine everything in my new house?"
"Yes?"
"Suppose I went from room to room, and searched everything, and peeped in 
everywhere? Do you think there would be any chance--"
The quick-witted Major anticipated the nature of my question. He followed my 
example; he too started to his feet, with a new idea in his mind.
"Would there be any chance," I went on, "of my finding my own way to my 
husband's secret in this house? One word of reply, Major Fitz-David! Only one 
word--Yes or No?"
"Don't excite yourself!" cried the Major.
"Yes or No?" I repeated, more vehemently than ever.
"Yes," said the Major, after a moment's consideration.
It was the reply I had asked for; but it was not explicit enough, now I had got 
it, to satisfy me. I felt the necessity of leading him (if possible) into 
details.
"Does 'Yes' mean that there is some sort of clew to the mystery?" I asked. 
"Something, for instance, which my eyes might see and my hands might touch if I 
could only find it?"
He considered again. I saw that I had succeeded in interesting him in some way 
unknown to myself; and I waited patiently until he was prepared to answer me.
"The thing you mention," he said, "the clew (as you call it), might be seen and 
might be touched--supposing you could find it."
"In this house?" I asked.
The Major advanced a step nearer to me, and answered--
"In this room."
My head began to swim; my heart throbbed violently. I tried to speak; it was in 
vain; the effort almost choked me. In the silence I could hear the music-lesson 
still going on in the room above. The future prima donna had done practicing her 
scales, and was trying her voice now in selections from Italian operas. At the 
moment when I first heard her she was singing the beautiful air from the 
Somnambula, "Come per me sereno." I never hear that delicious melody, to this 
day, without being instantly transported in imagination to the fatal back-room 
in Vivian Place.
The Major--strongly affected himself by this time--was the first to break the 
silence.
"Sit down again," he said; "and pray take the easy-chair. You are very much 
agitated; you want rest."
He was right. I could stand no longer; I dropped into the chair. Major 
Fitz-David rang the bell, and spoke a few words to the servant at the door.
"I have been here a long time," I said, faintly. "Tell me if I am in the way."
"In the way?" he repeated, with his irresistible smile. "You forget that you are 
in your own house!"
The servant returned to us, bringing with him a tiny bottle of champagne and a 
plateful of delicate little sugared biscuits.
"I have had this wine bottled expressly for the ladies," said the Major. "The 
biscuits came to me direct from Paris. As a favor to me, you must take some 
refreshment. And then--" He stopped and looked at me very attentively. "And 
then," he resumed, "shall I go to my young prima donna upstairs and leave you 
here alone?"
It was impossible to hint more delicately at the one request which I now had it 
in my mind to make to him. I took his hand and pressed it gratefully.
"The tranquillity of my whole life to come is at stake," I said. "When I am left 
here by myself, does your generous sympathy permit me to examine everything in 
the room?"
He signed to me to drink the champagne and eat a biscuit before he gave his 
answer.
"This is serious," he said. "I wish you to be in perfect possession of yourself 
. Restore your strength--and then I will speak to you."
I did as he bade me. In a minute from the time when I drank it the delicious 
sparkling wine had begun to revive me.
"Is it your express wish," he resumed, "that I should leave you here by yourself 
to search the room?"
"It is my express wish," I answered.
"I take a heavy responsibility on myself in granting your request. But I grant 
it for all that, because I sincerely believe--as you believe--that the 
tranquillity of your life to come depends on your discovering the truth." Saying 
those words, he took two keys from his pocket. "You will naturally feel a 
suspicion," he went on, "of any locked doors that you may find here. The only 
locked places in the room are the doors of the cupboards under the long 
book-case, and the door of the Italian cabinet in that corner. The small key 
opens the book-case cupboards; the long key opens the cabinet door."
With that explanation, he laid the keys before me on the table.
"Thus far," he said, "I have rigidly respected the promise which I made to your 
husband. I shall continue to be faithful to my promise, whatever may be the 
result of your examination of the room. I am bound in honor not to assist you by 
word or deed. I am not even at liberty to offer you the slightest hint. Is that 
understood?"
"Certainly!"
"Very good. I have now a last word of warning to give you--and then I have done. 
If you do by any chance succeed in laying your hand on the clew, remember 
this--the discovery which follows will be a terrible one. If you have any doubt 
about your capacity to sustain a shock which will strike you to the soul, for 
God's sake give up the idea of finding out your husband's secret at once and 
forever!"
"I thank you for your warning, Major. I must face the consequences of making the 
discovery, whatever they may be."
"You are positively resolved?"
"Positively."
"Very well. Take any time you please. The house, and every person in it, are at 
your disposal. Ring the bell once if you want the man-servant. Ring twice if you 
wish the housemaid to wait on you. From time to time I shall just look in myself 
to see how you are going on. I am responsible for your comfort and security, you 
know, while you honor me by remaining under my roof."
He lifted my hand to his lips, and fixed a last attentive look on me.
"I hope I am not running too great a risk," he said--more to himself than to me. 
"The women have led me into many a rash action in my time. Have you led me, I 
wonder, into the rashest action of all?"
With those ominous last words he bowed gravely and left me alone in the room.



CHAPTER X.
THE SEARCH.



THE fire burning in the grate was not a very large one; and the outer air (as I 
had noticed on my way to the house) had something of a wintry sharpness in it 
that day.
Still, my first feeling, when Major Fitz-David left me, was a feeling of heat 
and oppression, with its natural result, a difficulty in breathing freely. The 
nervous agitation of the time was, I suppose, answerable for these sensations. I 
took off my bonnet and mantle and gloves, and opened the window for a little 
while. Nothing was to be seen outside but a paved courtyard, with a skylight in 
the middle, closed at the further end by the wall of the Major's stables. A few 
minutes at the window cooled and refreshed me. I shut it down again, and took my 
first step on the way of discovery. In other words, I began my first examination 
of the four walls around me, and of all that they inclosed.
I was amazed at my own calmness. My interview with Major Fitz-David had, 
perhaps, exhausted my capacity for feeling any strong emotion, for the time at 
least. It was a relief to me to be alone; it was a relief to me to begin the 
search. Those were my only sensations so far.
The shape of the room was oblong. Of the two shorter walls, one contained the 
door in grooves which I have already mentioned as communicating with the front 
room; the other was almost entirely occupied by the broad window which looked 
out on the courtyard.
Taking the doorway wall first, what was there, in the shape of furniture, on 
either side of it? There was a card-table on either side. Above each card-table 
stood a magnificent china bowl placed on a gilt and carved bracket fixed to the 
wall.
I opened the card-tables. The drawers beneath contained nothing but cards, and 
the usual counters and markers. With the exception of one pack, the cards in 
both tables were still wrapped in their paper covers exactly as they had come 
from the shop. I examined the loose pack, card by card. No writing, no mark of 
any kind, was visible on any one of them. Assisted by a library ladder which 
stood against the book-case, I looked next into the two china bowls. Both were 
perfectly empty. Was there anything more to examine on that side of the room? In 
the two corners there were two little chairs of inlaid wood, with red silk 
cushions. I turned them up and looked under the cushions, and still I made no 
discoveries. When I had put the chairs back in their places my search on one 
side of the room was complete. So far I had found nothing.
I crossed to the opposite wall, the wall which contained the window.
The window (occupying, as I have said, almost the entire length and height of 
the wall) was divided into three compartments, and was adorned at their 
extremity by handsome curtains of dark red velvet. The ample heavy folds of the 
velvet left just room at the two corners of the wall for two little upright 
cabinets in buhl, containing rows of drawers, and supporting two fine bronze 
productions (reduced in size) of the Venus Milo and the Venus Callipyge. I had 
Major Fitz-David's permission to do just what I pleased. I opened the six 
drawers in each cabinet, and examined their contents without hesitation.
Beginning with the cabinet in the right-hand corner, my investigations were soon 
completed. All the six drawers were alike occupied by a collection of fossils, 
which (judging by the curious paper inscriptions fixed on some of them) were 
associated with a past period of the Major's life when he had speculated, not 
very successfully in mines. After satisfying myself that the drawers contained 
nothing but the fossils and their inscriptions, I turned to the cabinet in the 
left-hand corner next.
Here a variety of objects was revealed to view, and the examination accordingly 
occupied a much longer time.
The top drawer contained a complete collection of carpenter's tools in 
miniature, relics probably of the far-distant time when the Major was a boy, and 
when parents or friends had made him a present of a set of toy tools. The second 
drawer was filled with toys of another sort--presents made to Major Fitz-David 
by his fair friends. Embroidered braces, smart smoking-caps, quaint pincushions, 
gorgeous slippers, glittering purses, all bore witness to the popularity of the 
friend of the women. The contents of the third drawer were of a less interesting 
sort: the entire space was filled with old account-books, ranging over a period 
of many years. After looking into each book, and opening and shaking it 
uselessly, in search of any loose papers which might be hidden between the 
leaves, I came to the fourth drawer, and found more relics of past pecuniary 
transactions in the shape of receipted bills, neatly tied together, and each 
inscribed at the back. Among the bills I found nearly a dozen loose papers, all 
equally unimportant. The fifth drawer was in sad confusion. I took out first a 
loose bundle of ornamental cards, each containing the list of dishes at past 
banquets given or attended by the Major in London or Paris; next, a box full of 
delicately tinted quill pens (evidently a lady's gift); next, a quantity of old 
invitation cards; next, some dog's-eared French plays and books of the opera; 
next, a pocket-corkscrew, a bundle of cigarettes, and a bunch of rusty keys; 
lastly, a passport, a set of luggage labels, a broken silver snuff-box, two 
cigar-cases, and a torn map of Rome. "Nothing anywhere to interest me," I 
thought, as I closed the fifth, and opened the sixth and last drawer.
The sixth drawer was at once a surprise and a disappointment. It literally 
contained nothing but the fragments of a broken vase.
I was sitting, at the time, opposite to the cabinet, in a low chair. In the 
momentary irritation caused by my discovery of the emptiness of the last drawer, 
I had just lifted my foot to push it back into its place, when the door 
communicating with the hall opened, and Major Fitz-David stood before me.
His eyes, after first meeting mine, traveled downward to my foot. The instant he 
noticed the open drawer I saw a change in his face. It was only for a moment; 
but in that moment he looked at me with a sudden suspicion and surprise--looked 
as if he had caught me with my hand on the clew.
"Pray don't let me disturb you," said Major Fitz-David. "I have only come here 
to ask you a question."
"What is it, Major?"
"Have you met with any letters of mine in the course of your investigations?"
"I have found none yet," I answered. "If I do discover any letters, I shall, of 
course, not take the liberty of examining them."
"I wanted to speak to you about that," he rejoined. "It only struck me a moment 
since, upstairs, that my letters might embarrass you. In your place I should 
feel some distrust of anything which I was not at liberty to examine. I think I 
can set this matter right, however, with very little trouble to either of us. It 
is no violation of any promises or pledges on my part if I simply tell you that 
my letters will not assist the discovery which you are trying to make. You can 
safely pass them over as objects that are not worth examining from your point of 
view. You understand me, I am sure?"
"I am much obliged to you, Major--I quite understand."
"Are you feeling any fatigue?"
"None whatever, thank you."
"And you still hope to succeed? You are not beginning to be discouraged 
already?"
"I am not in the least discouraged. With your kind leave, I mean to persevere 
for some time yet."
I had not closed the drawer of the cabinet while we were talking, and I glanced 
carelessly, as I answered him, at the fragments of the broken vase. By this time 
he had got his feelings under perfect command. He, too, glanced at the fragments 
of the vase with an appearance of perfect indifference. I remembered the look of 
suspicion and surprise that had escaped him on entering the room, and I thought 
his indifference a little overacted.
"That doesn't look very encouraging," he said, with a smile, pointing to the 
shattered pieces of china in the drawer.
"Appearances are not always to be trusted," I replied. "The wisest thing I can 
do in my present situation is to suspect everything, even down to a broken 
vase."
I looked hard at him as I spoke. He changed the subject.
"Does the music upstairs annoy you?" he asked.
"Not in the least, Major."
"It will soon be over now. The singing-master is going, and the Italian master 
has just arrived. I am sparing no pains to make my young prima donna a most 
accomplished person. In learning to sing she must also learn the language which 
is especially the language of music. I shall perfect her in the accent when I 
take her to Italy. It is the height of my ambition to have her mistaken for an 
Italian when she sings in public. Is there anything I can do before I leave you 
again? May I send you some more champagne? Please say yes!"
"A thousand thanks, Major. No more champagne for the present."
He turned at the door to kiss his hand to me at parting. At the same moment I 
saw his eyes wander slyly toward the book-case. It was only for an instant. I 
had barely detected him before he was out of the room.
Left by myself again, I looked at the book-case--looked at it attentively for 
the first time.
It was a handsome piece of furniture in ancient carved oak, and it stood against 
the wall which ran parallel with the hall of the house. Excepting the space 
occupied in the upper corner of the room by the second door, which opened into 
the hall, the book-case filled the whole length of the wall down to the window. 
The top was ornamented by vases, candelabra, and statuettes, in pairs, placed in 
a row. Looking along the row, I noticed a vacant space on the top of the 
bookcase at the extremity of it which was nearest to the window. The opposite 
extremity, nearest to the door, was occupied by a handsome painted vase of a 
very peculiar pattern. Where was the corresponding vase, which ought to have 
been placed at the corresponding extremity of the book-case? I returned to the 
open sixth drawer of the cabinet, and looked in again. There was no mistaking 
the pattern on the fragments when I examined them now. The vase which had been 
broken was the vase which had stood in the place now vacant on the top of the 
book-case at the end nearest to the window.
Making this discovery, I took out the fragments, down to the smallest morsel of 
the shattered china, and examined them carefully one after another.
I was too ignorant of the subject to be able to estimate the value of the vase 
or the antiquity of the vase, or even to know whether it were of British or of 
foreign manufacture. The ground was of a delicate cream-color. The ornaments 
traced on this were wreaths of flowers and Cupids surrounding a medallion on 
either side of the vase. Upon the space within one of the medallions was painted 
with exquisite delicacy a woman's head, representing a nymph or a goddess, or 
perhaps a portrait of some celebrated person--I was not learned enough to say 
which. The other medallion inclosed the head of a man, also treated in the 
classical style. Reclining shepherds and shepherdesses in Watteau costume, with 
their dogs and their sheep, formed the adornments of the pedestal. Such had the 
vase been in the days of its prosperity, when it stood on the top of the 
book-case. By what accident had it become broken? And why had Major Fitz-David's 
face changed when he found that I had discovered the remains of his shattered 
work of art in the cabinet drawer?
The remains left those serious questions unanswered--the remains told me 
absolutely nothing. And yet, if my own observation of the Major were to be 
trusted, the way to the clew of which I was in search lay, directly or 
indirectly, through the broken vase.
It was useless to pursue the question, knowing no more than I knew now. I 
returned to the book-case.
Thus far I had assumed (without any sufficient reason) that the clew of which I 
was in search must necessarily reveal itself through a written paper of some 
sort. It now occurred to me--after the movement which I had detected on the part 
of the Major--that the clew might quite as probably present itself in the form 
of a book.
I looked along the lower rows of shelves, standing just near enough to them to 
read the titles on the backs of the volumes. I saw Voltaire in red morocco, 
Shakespeare in blue, Walter Scott in green, the "History of England" in brown, 
the "Annual Register" in yellow calf. There I paused, wearied and discouraged 
already by the long rows of volumes. How (I thought to myself) am I to examine 
all these books? And what am I to look for, even if I do examine them all?
Major Fitz-David had spoken of a terrible misfortune which had darkened my 
husband's past life. In what possible way could any trace of that misfortune, or 
any suggestive hint of something resembling it, exist in the archives of the 
"Annual Register" or in the pages of Voltaire? The bare idea of such a thing 
seemed absurd The mere attempt to make a serious examination in this direction 
was surely a wanton waste of time.
And yet the Major had certainly stolen a look at the book-case. And again, the 
broken vase had once stood on the book-case. Did these cir cumstances justify me 
in connecting the vase and the book-case as twin landmarks on the way that led 
to discovery? The question was not an easy one to decide on the spur of the 
moment.
I looked up at the higher shelves.
Here the collection of books exhibited a greater variety. The volumes were 
smaller, and were not so carefully arranged as on the lower shelves. Some were 
bound in cloth, some were only protected by paper covers; one or two had fallen, 
and lay flat on the shelves. Here and there I saw empty spaces from which books 
had been removed and not replaced. In short, there was no discouraging 
uniformity in these higher regions of the book-case. The untidy top shelves 
looked suggestive of some lucky accident which might unexpectedly lead the way 
to success. I decided, if I did examine the book-case at all, to begin at the 
top.
Where was the library ladder?
I had left it against the partition wall which divided the back room from the 
room in front. Looking that way, I necessarily looked also toward the door that 
ran in grooves--the imperfectly closed door through which I heard Major 
Fitz-David question his servant on the subject of my personal appearance when I 
first entered the house. No one had moved this door during the time of my visit. 
Everybody entering or leaving the room had used the other door, which led into 
the hall.
At the moment when I looked round something stirred in the front room. The 
movement let the light in suddenly through the small open space left by the 
partially closed door. Had somebody been watching me through the chink? I 
stepped softly to the door, and pushed it back until it was wide open. There was 
the Major, discovered in the front room! I saw it in his face--he had been 
watching me at the book-case!
His hat was in his hand. He was evidently going out; and he dexterously took 
advantage of that circumstance to give a plausible reason for being so near the 
door.
"I hope I didn't frighten you," he said.
"You startled me a little, Major."
"I am so sorry, and so ashamed! I was just going to open the door, and tell you 
that I am obliged to go out. I have received a pressing message from a lady. A 
charming person--I should so like you to know her. She is in sad trouble, poor 
thing. Little bills, you know, and nasty tradespeople who want their money, and 
a husband--oh, dear me, a husband who is quite unworthy of her! A most 
interesting creature. You remind me of her a little; you both have the same 
carriage of the head. I shall not be more than half an hour gone. Can I do 
anything for you? You are looking fatigued. Pray let me send for some more 
champagne. No? Promise to ring when you want it. That's right! Au revoir, my 
charming friend--au revoir!"
I pulled the door to again the moment his back was turned, and sat down for a 
while to compose myself.
He had been watching me at the book-case! The man who was in my husband's 
confidence, the man who knew where the clew was to be found, had been watching 
me at the book-case! There was no doubt of it now. Major Fitz-David had shown me 
the hiding-place of the secret in spite of himself!
I looked with indifference at the other pieces of furniture, ranged against the 
fourth wall, which I had not examined yet. I surveyed, without the slightest 
feeling of curiosity, all the little elegant trifles scattered on the tables and 
on the chimney-piece, each one of which might have been an object of suspicion 
to me under other circumstances. Even the water-color drawings failed to 
interest me in my present frame of mind. I observed languidly that they were 
most of them portraits of ladies--fair idols, no doubt, of the Major's facile 
adoration--and I cared to notice no more. My business in that room (I was 
certain of it now!) began and ended with the book-case. I left my seat to fetch 
the library ladder, determining to begin the work of investigation on the top 
shelves.
On my way to the ladder I passed one of the tables, and saw the keys lying on it 
which Major Fitz-David had left at my disposal.
The smaller of the two keys instantly reminded me of the cupboards under the 
bookcase. I had strangely overlooked these. A vague distrust of the locked doors 
a vague doubt of what they might be hiding from me, stole into my mind. I left 
the ladder in its place against the wall, and set myself to examine the contents 
of the cupboards first.
The cupboards were three in number. As I opened the first of them the singing 
upstairs ceased. For a moment there was something almost oppressive in the 
sudden change from noise to silence. I suppose my nerves must have been 
overwrought. The next sound in the house--nothing more remarkable than the 
creaking of a man's boots descending the stairs--made me shudder all over. The 
man was no doubt the singing-master, going away after giving his lesson. I heard 
the house door close on him, and started at the familiar sound as if it were 
something terrible which I had never heard before. Then there was silence again. 
I roused myself as well as I could, and began my examination of the first 
cupboard.
It was divided into two compartments.
The top compartment contained nothing but boxes of cigars, ranged in rows, one 
on another. The under compartment was devoted to a collection of shells. They 
were all huddled together anyhow, the Major evidently setting a far higher value 
on his cigars than on his shells. I searched this lower compartment carefully 
for any object interesting to me which might be hidden in it. Nothing was to be 
found in any part of it besides the shells.
As I opened the second cupboard it struck me that the light was beginning to 
fail.
I looked at the window: it was hardly evening yet. The darkening of the light 
was produced by gathering clouds. Rain-drops pattered against the glass; the 
autumn wind whistled mournfully in the corners of the courtyard. I mended the 
fire before I renewed my search. My nerves were in fault again, I suppose. I 
shivered when I went back to the book-case. My hands trembled: I wondered what 
was the matter with me.
The second cupboard revealed (in the upper division of it) some really beautiful 
cameos--not mounted, but laid on cotton-wool in neat cardboard trays. In one 
corner, half hidden under one of the trays, there peeped out the white leaves of 
a little manuscript. I pounced on it eagerly, only to meet with a new 
disappointment: the manuscript proved to be a descriptive catalogue of the 
cameos--nothing more!
Turning to the lower division of the cupboard, I found more costly curiosities 
in the shape of ivory carvings from Japan and specimens of rare silk from China. 
I began to feel weary of disinterring the Major's treasures. The longer I 
searched, the farther I seemed to remove myself from the one object that I had 
it at heart to attain. After closing the door of the second cupboard, I almost 
doubted whether it would be worth my while to proceed farther and open the third 
and last door.
A little reflection convinced me that it would be as well, now that I had begun 
my examination of the lower regions of the book-case, to go on with it to the 
end. I opened the last cupboard.
On the upper shelf there appeared, in solitary grandeur, one object only--a 
gorgeously bound book.
It was of a larger size than usual, judging of it by comparison with the 
dimensions of modern volumes. The binding was of blue velvet, with clasps of 
silver worked in beautiful arabesque patterns, and with a lock of the same 
precious metal to protect the book from prying eyes. When I took it up, I found 
that the lock was not closed.
Had I any right to take advantage of this accident, and open the book? I have 
put the question since to some of my friends of both sexes. The women all agree 
that I was perfectly justified, considering the serious interests that I had at 
stake, in taking any advantage of any book in the Major's house. The men differ 
from this view, and declare that I ought to have put back the volume in blue 
velvet unopened, carefully guarding myself from any after-temptation to look at 
it again by locking the cupboard door. I dare say the men are right.
Being a woman, however, I opened the book without a moment's hesitation.
The leaves were of the finest vellum, with tastefully designed illuminations all 
round them. And what did these highly ornamental pages contain? To my 
unutterable amazement and disgust, they contained locks of hair, let neatly into 
the center of each page, with inscriptions beneath, which proved them to be 
love-tokens from various ladies who had touched the Major's susceptible heart at 
different periods of his life. The inscriptions were written in other languages 
besides English, but they appeared to be all equally devoted to the same curious 
purpose, namely, to reminding the Major of the dates at which his various 
attachments had come to an untimely end. Thus the first page exhibited a lock of 
the lightest flaxen hair, with these lines beneath: "My adored Madeline. Eternal 
constancy. Alas, July 22, 1839!" The next page was adorned by a darker shade of 
hair, with a French inscription under it: "Clemence. Idole de mon ’me. Toujours 
fidele. Helas, 2me Avril, 1840." A lock of red hair followed, with a lamentation 
in Latin under it, a note being attached to the date of dissolution of 
partnership in this case, stating that the lady was descended from the ancient 
Romans, and was therefore mourned appropriately in Latin by her devoted 
Fitz-David. More shades of hair and more inscriptions followed, until I was 
weary of looking at them. I put down the book, disgusted with the creatures who 
had assisted in filling it, and then took it up again, by an afterthought. Thus 
far I had thoroughly searched everything that had presented itself to my notice. 
Agreeable or not agreeable, it was plainly of serious importance to my own 
interests to go on as I had begun, and thoroughly to search the book.
I turned over the pages until I came to the first blank leaf. Seeing that they 
were all blank leaves from this place to the end, I lifted the volume by the 
back, and, as a last measure of precaution, shook it so as to dislodge any loose 
papers or cards which might have escaped my notice between the leaves.
This time my patience was rewarded by a discovery which indescribably irritated 
and distressed me.
A small photograph, mounted on a card, fell out of the book. A first glance 
showed me that it represented the portraits of two persons.
One of the persons I recognized as my husband.
The other person was a woman.
Her face was entirely unknown to me. She was not young. The picture represented 
her seated on a chair, with my husband standing behind, and bending over her, 
holding one of her hands in his. The woman's face was hard-featured and ugly, 
with the marking lines of strong passions and resolute self-will plainly written 
on it. Still, ugly as she was, I felt a pang of jealousy as I noticed the 
familiarly affectionate action by which the artist (with the permission of his 
sitters, of course) had connected the two figures in a group. Eustace had 
briefly told me, in the days of our courtship, that he had more than once 
fancied himself to be in love before he met with me. Could this very 
unattractive woman have been one of the early objects of his admiration? Had she 
been near enough and dear enough to him to be photographed with her hand in his? 
I looked and looked at the portraits until I could endure them no longer. Women 
are strange creatures--mysteries even to themselves. I threw the photograph from 
me into a corner of the cupboard. I was savagely angry with my husband; I 
hated--yes, hated with all my heart and soul!--the woman who had got his hand in 
hers--the unknown woman with the self-willed, hard-featured face.
All this time the lower shelf of the cupboard was still waiting to be looked 
over.
I knelt down to examine it, eager to clear my mind, if I could, of the degrading 
jealousy that had got possession of me.
Unfortunately, the lower shelf contained nothing but relics of the Major's 
military life, comprising his sword and pistols, his epaulets, his sash, and 
other minor accouterments. None of these objects excited the slightest interest 
in me. My eyes wandered back to the upper shelf; and, like the fool I was (there 
is no milder word that can fitly describe me at that moment), I took the 
photograph out again, and enraged myself uselessly by another look at it. This 
time I observed, what I had not noticed before, that there were some lines of 
writing (in a woman's hand) at the back of the portraits. The lines ran thus:
'To Major Fitz-David, with two vases. From his friends, S. and E. M."
Was one of those two vases the vase that had been broken? And was the change 
that I had noticed in Major Fitz-David's face produced by some past association 
in connection with it, which in some way affected me? It might or might not be 
so. I was little disposed to indulge in speculation on this topic while the far 
more serious question of the initials confronted me on the back of the 
photograph.
"S. and E. M.?" Those last two letters might stand for the initials of my 
husband's name--his true name--Eustace Macallan. In this case the first letter 
("S.") in all probability indicated her name. What right had she to associate 
herself with him in that manner? I considered a little--my memory exerted 
itself--I suddenly called to mind that Eustace had sisters. He had spoken of 
them more than once in the time before our marriage. Had I been mad enough to 
torture myself with jealousy of my husband's sister? It might well be so; "S." 
might stand for his sister's Christian name. I felt heartily ashamed of myself 
as this new view of the matter dawned on me. What a wrong I had done to them 
both in my thoughts! I turned the photograph, sadly and penitently, to examine 
the portraits again with a kinder and truer appreciation of them.
I naturally looked now for a family likeness between the two faces. There was no 
family likeness; on the contrary, they were as unlike each other in form and 
expression as faces could be. Was she his sister, after all? I looked at her 
hands, as represented in the portrait. Her right hand was clasped by Eustace; 
her left hand lay on her lap. On the third finger, distinctly visible, there was 
a wedding-ring. Were any of my husband's sisters married? I had myself asked him 
the question when he mentioned them to me, and I perfectly remembered that he 
had replied in the negative.
Was it possible that my first jealous instinct had led me to the right 
conclusion after all? If it had, what did the association of the three initial 
letters mean? What did the wedding-ring mean? Good Heavens! was I looking at the 
portrait of a rival in my husband's affections--and was that rival his Wife?
I threw the photograph from me with a cry of horror. For one terrible moment I 
felt as if my reason was giving way. I don't know what would have happened, or 
what I should have done next, if my love for Eustace had not taken the uppermost 
place among the contending emotions that tortured me. That faithful love 
steadied my brain. That faithful love roused the reviving influences of my 
better and nobler sense. Was the man whom I had enshrined in my heart of hearts 
capable of such base wickedness as the bare idea of his marriage to another 
woman implied? No! Mine was the baseness, mine the wickedness, in having even 
for a moment thought it of him!
I picked up the detestable photograph from the floor, and put it back in the 
book. I hastily closed the cupboard door, fetched the library ladder, and set it 
against the book-case. My one idea now was the idea of taking refuge in 
employment of any sort from my own thoughts. I felt the hateful suspicion that 
had degraded me coming back again in spite of my efforts to repel it. The books! 
the books! my only hope was to absorb myself, body and soul, in the books.
I had one foot on the ladder, when I heard the door of the room open--the door 
which communicated with the hall.
I looked around, expecting to see the Major. I saw instead the Major's future 
prima donna standing just inside the door, with her round eyes steadily fixed on 
me.
"I can stand a good deal," the girl began, coolly, "but I can't stand this any 
longer?"
"What is it that you can't stand any longer?" I asked.
"If you have been here a minute, you have been here two good hours," she went 
on. "All by yourself in the Major's study. I am of a jealous disposition--I am. 
And I want to know what it means." She advanced a few steps nearer to me, with a 
heightening color and a threatening look. "Is he going to bring you out on the 
stage?" she asked, sharply.
"Certainly not."
"He ain't in love with you, is he?"
Under other circumstances I might have told her to leave the room. In my 
position at that critical moment the mere presence of a human creature was a 
positive relief to me. Even this girl, with her coarse questions and her 
uncultivated manners, was a welcome intruder on my solitude: she offered me a 
refuge from myself.
"Your question is not very civilly put," I said. "However, I excuse you. You are 
probably not aware that I am a married woman."
"What has that got to do with it?" she retorted. "Married or single, it's all 
one to the Major. That brazen-faced hussy who calls herself Lady Clarinda is 
married, and she sends him nosegays three times a week! Not that I care, mind 
you, about the old fool. But I've lost my situation at the railway, and I've got 
my own interests to look after, and I don't know what may happen if I let other 
women come between him and me. That's where the shoe pinches, don't you see? I'm 
not easy in my mind when I see him leaving you mistress here to do just what you 
like. No offense! I speak out--I do. I want to know what you are about all by 
yourself in this room? How did you pick up with the Major? I never heard him 
speak of you before to-day."
Under all the surface selfishness and coarseness of this strange girl there was 
a certain frankness and freedom which pleaded in her favor--to my mind, at any 
rate. I answered frankly and freely on my side.
"Major Fitz-David is an old friend of my husband's," I said, "and he is kind to 
me for my husband's sake. He has given me permission to look in this room--"
I stopped, at a loss how to describe my employment in terms which should tell 
her nothing, and which should at the same time successfully set her distrust of 
me at rest.
"To look about in this room--for what?" she asked. Her eye fell on the library 
ladder, beside which I was still standing. "For a book?" she resumed.
"Yes," I said, taking the hint. "For a book."
"Haven't you found it yet?"
"No."
She looked hard at me, undisguisedly considering with herself whether I were or 
were not speaking the truth.
"You seem to be a good sort," she said, making up her mind at last. "There's 
nothing stuck-up about you. I'll help you if I can. I have rummaged among the 
books here over and over again, and I know more about them than you do. What 
book do you want?"
As she put that awkward question she noticed for the first time Lady Clarinda's 
nosegay lying on the side-table where the Major had left it. Instantly 
forgetting me and my book, this curious girl pounced like a fury on the flowers, 
and actually trampled them under her feet!
"There!" she cried. "If I had Lady Clarinda here I'd serve her in the same way."
"What will the Major say?" I asked.
"What do I care? Do you suppose I'm afraid of him? Only last week I broke one of 
his fine gimcracks up there, and all through Lady Clarinda and her flowers!"
She pointed to the top of the book-case--to the empty space on it close by the 
window. My heart gave a sudden bound as my eyes took the direction indicated by 
her finger. She had broken the vase! Was the way to discovery about to reveal 
itself to me through this girl? Not a word would pass my lips; I could only look 
at her.
"Yes!" she said. "The thing stood there. He knows how I hate her flowers, and he 
put her nosegay in the vase out of my way. There was a woman's face painted on 
the china, and he told me it was the living image of her face. It was no more 
like her than I am. I was in such a rage that I up with the book I was reading 
at the time and shied it at the painted face. Over the vase went, bless your 
heart, crash to the floor. Stop a bit! I wonder whether that's the book you have 
been looking after? Are you like me? Do you like reading Trials?"
Trials? Had I heard her aright? Yes: she had said Trials.
I answered by an affirmative motion of my head. I was still speechless. The girl 
sauntered in her cool way to the fire-place, and, taking up the tongs, returned 
with them to the book-case.
"Here's where the book fell," she said--"in the space between the book-case and 
the wall. I'll have it out in no time."
I waited without moving a muscle, without uttering a word.
She approached me with the tongs in one hand and with a plainly bound volume in 
the other.
"Is that the book?" she said. "Open it, and see."
I took the book from her.
"It is tremendously interesting," she went on. "I've read it twice over--I have. 
Mind you, I believe he did it, after all."
Did it? Did what? What was she talking about? I tried to put the question to 
her. I struggled--quite vainly--to say only these words: "What are you talking 
about?"
She seemed to lose all patience with me. She snatched the book out of my hand, 
and opened it before me on the table by which we were standing side by side.
"I declare, you're as helpless as a baby!" she said, contemptuously. "There! Is 
that the book?"
I read the first lines on the title-page--



A COMPLETE REPORT
OF
THE TRIAL
OF
EUSTACE MACALLAN.



I stopped and looked up at her. She started back from me with a scream of 
terror. I looked down again at the title-page, and read the next lines-- 



FOR THE ALLEGED POISONING
OF
HIS WIFE.



There, God's mercy remembered me. There the black blank of a swoon swallowed me 
up.



CHAPTER XI.
THE RETURN TO LIFE.



My first remembrance when I began to recover my senses was the remembrance of 
Pain--agonizing pain, as if every nerve in my body were being twisted and torn 
out of me. My whole being writhed and quivered under the dumb and dreadful 
protest of Nature against the effort to recall me to life. I would have given 
worlds to be able to cry out--to entreat the unseen creatures about me to give 
me back to death. How long that speechless agony held me I never knew. In a 
longer or shorter time there stole over me slowly a sleepy sense of relief. I 
heard my own labored breathing. I felt my hands moving feebly and mechanically, 
like the hands of a baby. I faintly opened my eyes and looked round me--as if I 
had passed through the ordeal of death, and had awakened to new senses in a new 
world.
The first person I saw was a man--a stranger. He moved quietly out of my sight; 
beckoning, as he disappeared, to some other person in the room.
Slowly and unwillingly the other person advanced to the sofa on which I lay. A 
faint cry of joy escaped me; I tried to hold out my feeble hands. The other 
person who was approaching me was my husband!
I looked at him eagerly. He never looked at me in return. With his eyes on the 
ground, with a strange appearance of confusion and distress in his face, he too 
moved away out of my sight. The unknown man whom I had first noticed followed 
him out of the room. I called after him faintly, "Eustace!" He never answered; 
he never returned. With an effort I moved my head on the pillow, so as to look 
round on the other side of the sofa. Another familiar face appeared before me as 
if in a dream. My good old Benjamin was sitting watching me, with the tears in 
his eyes.
He rose and took my hand silently, in his simple, kindly way.
"Where is Eustace?" I asked. "Why has he gone away and left me?"
I was still miserably weak. My eyes wandered mechanically round the room as I 
put the question. I saw Major Fitz-David, I saw the table on which the singing 
girl had opened the book to show it to me. I saw the girl herself, sitting alone 
in a corner, with her handkerchief to her eyes as if she were crying. In one 
mysterious moment my memory recovered its powers. The recollection of that fatal 
title-page came back to me in all its horror. The one feeling that it roused in 
me now was a longing to see my husband--to throw myself into his arms, and tell 
him how firmly I believed in his innocence, how truly and dearly I loved him. I 
seized on Benjamin with feeble, trembling hands. "Bring him back to me!" I 
cried, wildly. "Where is he? Help me to get up!"
Benjamin, in his turn, looked at Major Fitz-David, and said, "Will you?" The 
Major signed to them both to leave us. They rose together, and went into the 
front room, pulling the door to after them in its grooves. As they left us, the 
girl who had so strangely revealed my husband's secret to me rose in her corner 
and approached the sofa.
"I suppose I had better go too?" she said, addressing Major Fitz-David.
"If you please," the Major answered.
He spoke (as I thought) rather coldly. She tossed her head, and turned her back 
on him in high indignation. "I must say a word for myself!" cried this strange 
creature, with a hysterical outbreak of energy. "I must say a word, or I shall 
burst!"
With that extraordinary preface, she suddenly turned my way and poured out a 
perfect torrent of words on me.
"You hear how the Major speaks to me?" she began. "He blames me--poor Me--for 
everything that has happened. I am as innocent as the new-born babe. I acted for 
the best. I thought you wanted the book. I don't know now what made you faint 
dead away when I opened it. And the Major blames Me! As if it was my fault! I am 
not one of the fainting sort myself; but I feel it, I can tell you. Yes! I feel 
it, though I don't faint about it. I come of respectable parents--I do. My name 
is Hoighty--Miss Hoighty. I have my own self-respect; and it's wounded. I say my 
self-respect is wounded, when I find myself blamed without deserving it. You 
deserve it, if anybody does. Didn't you tell me you were looking for a book? And 
didn't I present it to you promiscuously, with the best intentions? I think you 
might say so yourself, now the doctor has brought you to again. I think you 
might speak up for a poor girl who is worked to death with singing and languages 
and what not--a poor girl who has nobody else to speak for her. I am as 
respectable as you are, if you come to that. My name is Hoighty. My parents are 
in business, and my mamma has seen better days, and mixed in the best of 
company."
There Miss Hoighty lifted her handkerchief again to her face, and burst modestly 
into tears behind it.
It was certainly hard to hold her responsible for what had happened. I answered 
as kindly as I could, and I attempted to speak to Major Fitz-David in her 
defense. He knew what terrible anxieties were oppressing me at that moment; and, 
considerately refusing to hear a word, he took the task of consoling his young 
prima donna entirely on himself. What he said to her I neither heard nor cared 
to hear: he spoke in a whisper. It ended in his pacifying Miss Hoighty, by 
kissing her hand, and leading her (as he might have led a duchess) out of the 
room.
"I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you--at such a time as this," he said, 
very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. "I can't tell you how grieved I am 
at what has happened. I was careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if 
I could only have foreseen--"
I let him proceed no further. No human forethought could have provided against 
what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the discovery had been, I would rather 
have made it, and suffered under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept 
in the dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that was now 
of any interest to me--the subject of my unhappy husband.
"How did he come to this house?" I asked.
He came here with Mr. Benjamin shortly after I returned," the Major replied.
"Long after I was taken ill?"
"No. I had just sent for the doctor--feeling seriously alarmed about you."
"What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel and miss me?"
"Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated, and he felt uneasy at not 
finding you at the hotel."
"Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the hotel?"
"No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin to inquire about you. What he 
heard from your old friend I cannot say. I only know that Mr. Benjamin 
accompanied him when he came here."
This brief explanation was quite enough for me--I understood what had happened. 
Eustace would easily frighten simple old Benjamin about my absence from the 
hotel; and, once alarmed, Benjamin would be persuaded without difficulty to 
repeat the few words which had passed between us on the subject of Major 
Fitz-David. My husband's presence in the Major's house was perfectly explained. 
But his extraordinary conduct in leaving the room at the very time when I was 
just recovering my senses still remained to be accounted for. Major Fitz-David 
looked seriously embarrassed when I put the question to him.
"I hardly know how to explain it to you," he said. "Eustace has surprised and 
disappointed me."
He spoke very gravely. His looks told me more than his words: his looks alarmed 
me.
"Eustace has not quarreled with you?" I said.
"Oh no!"
"He understands that you have not broken your promise to him?"
"Certainly. My young vocalist (Miss Hoighty) told the doctor exactly what had 
happened; and the doctor in her presence repeated the statement to your 
husband."
"Did the doctor see the Trial?"
"Neither the doctor nor Mr. Benjamin has seen the Trial. I have locked it up; 
and I have carefully kept the terrible story of your connection with the 
prisoner a secret from all of them. Mr. Benjamin evidently has his suspicions. 
But the doctor has no idea, and Miss Hoighty has no idea, of the true cause of 
your fainting fit. They both believe that you are subject to serious nervous 
attacks, and that your husband's name is really Woodville. All that the truest 
friend could do to spare Eustace I have done. He persists, nevertheless, in 
blaming me for letting you enter my house. And worse, far worse than this, he 
persists in declaring the event of to-day has fatally estranged you from him. 
'There is an end of our married life,' he said to me, 'now she knows that I am 
the man who was tried at Edinburgh for poisoning my wife!"'
I rose from the sofa in horror.
"Good God!" I cried, "does Eustace suppose that I doubt his innocence?"
"He denies that it is possible for you or for anybody to believe in his 
innocence," the Major replied.
"Help me to the door," I said. "Where is he? I must and will see him!"
I dropped back exhausted on the sofa as I said the words. Major Fitz-David 
poured out a glass of wine from the bottle on the table, and insisted on my 
drinking it.
"You shall see him," said the Major. "I promise you that. The doctor has 
forbidden him to leave the house until you have seen him. Only wait a little! My 
poor, dear lady, wait, if it is only for a few minutes, until you are stronger."
I had no choice but to obey him. Oh, those miserable, helpless minutes on the 
sofa! I cannot write of them without shuddering at the recollection--even at 
this distance of time.
"Bring him here!" I said. "Pray, pray bring him here!"
"Who is to persuade him to come back?" asked the Major, sadly. "How can I, how 
can anybody, prevail with a man--a madman I had almost said!--who could leave 
you at the moment when you first opened your eyes on him? I saw Eustace alone in 
the next room while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his 
obstinate distrust of your belief in his innocence and of my belief in his 
innocence by every argument and every appeal that an old friend could address to 
him. He had but one answer to give me. Reason as I might, and plead as I might, 
he still persisted in referring me to the Scotch Verdict."
"The Scotch Verdict?" I repeated. "What is that?"
The Major looked surprised at the question.
"Have you really never heard of the Trial?" he said.
"Never."
"I thought it strange," he went on, "when you told me you had found out your 
husband's true name, that the discovery appeared to have suggested no painful 
association to your mind. It is not more than three years since all England was 
talking of your husband. One can hardly wonder at his taking refuge, poor 
fellow, in an assumed name. Where could you have been at the time?"
"Did you say it was three years ago?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I think I can explain my strange ignorance of what was so well known to every 
one else. Three years since my father was alive. I was living with him in a 
country-house in Italy--up in the mountains, near Sienna. We never saw an 
English newspaper or met with an English traveler for weeks and weeks together. 
It is just possible that there might have been some reference made to the Trial 
in my father's letters from England. If there were, he never told me of it. Or, 
if he did mention the case, I felt no interest in it, and forgot it again 
directly. Tell me--what has the Verdict to do with my husband's horrible doubt 
of us? Eustace is a free man. The Verdict was Not Guilty, of course?"
Major Fitz-David shook his head sadly.
"Eustace was tried in Scotland," he said. "There is a verdict allowed by the 
Scotch law, which (so far as I know) is not permitted by the laws of any other 
civilized country on the face of the earth. When the jury are in doubt whether 
to condemn or acquit the prisoner brought before them, they are permitted, in 
Scotland, to express that doubt by a form of compromise. If there is not 
evidence enough, on the one hand, to justify them in finding a prisoner guilty, 
and not evidence enough, on the other hand, to thoroughly convince them that a 
prisoner is innocent, they extricate themselves from the difficulty by finding a 
verdict of Not Proven."
"Was that the Verdict when Eustace was tried?" I asked.
"Yes."
"The jury were not quite satisfied that my husband was guilty? and not quite 
satisfied that my husband was innocent? Is that what the Scotch Verdict means?"
"That is what the Scotch Verdict means. For three years that doubt about him in 
the minds of the jury who tried him has stood on public record."
Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last. The false name 
in which he had married me; the terrible words he had spoken when he had warned 
me to respect his secret; the still more terrible doubt that he felt of me at 
that moment--it was all intelligible to my sympathies, it was all clear to my 
understanding, now. I got up again from the sofa, strong in a daring resolution 
which the Scotch Verdict had suddenly kindled in me--a resolution at once too 
sacred and too desperate to be confided, in the first instance, to any other 
than my husband's ear.
"Take me to Eustace!" I cried. "I am strong enough to bear anything now."
After one searching look at me, the Major silently offered me his arm, and led 
me out of the room.



CHAPTER XII.
THE SCOTCH VERDICT.



We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David opened the door of a 
long, narrow room built out at the back of the house as a smoking-room, and 
extending along one side of the courtyard as far as the stable wall.
My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of it, near the 
fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me in silence as I entered. The 
Major softly closed the door on us and retired. Eustace never stirred a step to 
meet me. I ran to him, and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The 
embrace was not returned; the kiss was not returned. He passively 
submitted--nothing more.
"Eustace!" I said, "I never loved you more dearly than I love you at this 
moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"
He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to me with the 
mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.
"Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "You could say no 
less to me, after what has happened; and you could say no more. Thank you."
We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walked away slowly with 
his head down, apparently intending to leave the room.
I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him and the door.
"Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in this cruel way? Are 
you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you are angry, I ask you to forgive me."
"It is I who ought to ask your pardon," he replied. "I beg you to forgive me, 
Valeria, for having made you my wife."
He pronounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humility dreadful to 
see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace, look at me."
He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear and tearless--looking 
at me in steady resignation, in immovable despair. In the utter wretchedness of 
that moment, I was like him; I was as quiet and as cold as my husband. He 
chilled, he froze me.
"Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in your innocence?"
He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself. "Poor woman!" he 
said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me. "Poor woman!"
My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from his bosom, 
and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.
"I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice. You are not 
doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth in the days when we first 
knew that we loved each other--if you had told me all, and more than all that I 
know now--as God is my witness I would still have married you! Now do you doubt 
that I believe you are an innocent man!"
"I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous, Valeria. You are 
speaking generously and feeling generously. Don't blame me, my poor child, if I 
look on further than you do: if I see what is to come--too surely to come--in 
the cruel future."
"The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"
"You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried me doubted it--and 
have left that doubt on record. What reason have you for believing, in the face 
of the Verdict, that I am an innocent man?"
"I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite of the Verdict."
"Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know what has 
happened--and sooner or later they must know it--what will they say? They will 
say, 'He began badly; he concealed from our niece that he had been wedded to a 
first wife; he married our niece under a false name. He may say he is innocent; 
but we have only his word for it. When he was put on his Trial, the Verdict was 
Not Proven. Not Proven won't do for us. If the jury have done him an 
injustice--if he is innocent--let him prove it.' That is what the world thinks 
and says of me. That is what your friends will think and say of me. The time is 
coming, Valeria, when you--even You--will feel that your friends have reason to 
appeal to on their side, and that you have no reason on yours."
"That time will never come!" I answered, warmly. "You wrong me, you insult me, 
in thinking it possible!"
He put down my hand from him, and drew back a step, with a bitter smile.
"We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me is new and 
young. Time, which wears away all things, will wear away the first fervor of 
that love."
"Never! never!"
He drew back from me a little further still.
"Look at the world around you," he said. "The happiest husbands and wives have 
their occasional misunderstandings and disagreements; the brightest married life 
has its passing clouds. When those days come for us, the doubts and fears that 
you don't feel now will find their way to you then. When the clouds rise in our 
married life--when I say my first harsh word, when you make your first hasty 
reply--then, in the solitude of your own room, in the stillness of the wakeful 
night, you will think of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that 
I was held responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved. You will 
say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in her time, with a harsh word from him and with 
a hasty reply from her? Will it one day end with me as the jury half feared that 
it ended with her?' Hideous questions for a wife to ask herself! You will stifle 
them; you will recoil from them, like a good woman, with horror. But when we 
meet the next morning you will be on your guard, and I shall see it, and know in 
my heart of hearts what it means. Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh 
word may be harsher still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly 
and more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner, and that the 
question of his first wife's death was never properly cleared up. Do you see 
what materials for a domestic hell are mingling for us here? Was it for nothing 
that I warned you, solemnly warned you, to draw back, when I found you bent on 
discovering the truth? Can I ever be at your bedside now, when you are ill, and 
not remind you, in the most innocent things I do, of what happened at that other 
bedside, in the time of that other woman whom I married first? If I pour out 
your medicine, I commit a suspicious action--they say I poisoned her in her 
medicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembrance of a horrid 
doubt--they said I put the arsenic in her cup of tea. If I kiss you when I leave 
the room, I remind you that the prosecution accused me of kissing her, to save 
appearances and produce an effect on the nurse. Can we live together on such 
terms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery of it. This very 
day I said to you, 'If you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end 
of your happiness for the rest of your life.' You have taken that step and the 
end has come to your happiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills is 
on you and on me for the rest of our lives!"
So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words the picture of 
the future that he was placing before me became too hideous to be endured. I 
refused to hear more.
"You are talking horribly," I said. "At your age and at mine, have we done with 
love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to Love and Hope to say it!"
"Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered. "You mean to read it, I 
suppose?"
"Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet to know."
"No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, can alter the 
inexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned; and the verdict of the jury has 
not absolutely acquitted me of the guilt of causing her death. As long as you 
were ignorant of that the possibilities of happiness were always within our 
reach. Now you know it, I say again--our married life is at an end."
"No," I said. "Now I know it, our married life has begun--begun with a new 
object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason for your wife's love!"
"What do you mean?"
I went near to him again, and took his hand.
"What did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "What did you tell me 
my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't do for us. If the jury have done 
him an injustice--if he is innocent--let him prove it.' Those were the words you 
put into the mouths of my friends. I adopt them for mine! I say Not Proven won't 
do for me. Prove your right, Eustace, to a verdict of Not Guilty. Why have you 
let three years pass without doing it? Shall I guess why? You have waited for 
your wife to help you. Here she is, my darling, ready to help you with all her 
heart and soul. Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and to 
show the Scotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"
I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rang through the room. 
Had I roused him? What was his answer?
"Read the Trial." That was his answer.
I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook him with all 
my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him for the tone in 
which he had spoken and the look that he had cast on me!
"I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I mean to read it, 
line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made. Evidence in your 
favor that might have been found has not been found. Suspicious circumstances 
have not been investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! the 
conviction of some dreadful oversight, committed by you or by the persons who 
helped you, is firmly settled in my mind. The resolution to set that vile 
Verdict right was the first resolution that came to me when I first heard of it 
in the next room. We will set it right! We must set it right--for your sake, for 
my sake, for the sake of our children if we are blessed with children. Oh, my 
own love, don't look at me with those cold eyes! Don't answer me in those hard 
tones! Don't treat me as if I were talking ignorantly and madly of something 
that can never be!"
Still I never roused him. His next words were spoken compassionately rather than 
coldly--that was all.
"My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land," he said. "After 
such men have done their utmost, and have failed--my poor Valeria, what can you, 
what can I, do? We can only submit."
"Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatest lawyers 
have made mistakes before now. You can't deny that."
"Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words, and said no 
more.
In utter despair of moving him---feeling keenly, bitterly (if I must own it), 
his merciless superiority to all that I had said to him in the honest fervor of 
my devotion and my love--I thought of Major Fitz-David as a last resort. In the 
disordered state of my mind at that moment, it made no difference to me that the 
Major had already tried to reason with him, and had failed. In the face of the 
facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his old friend, if his old friend 
could only be prevailed upon to support my view.
"Wait for me one moment," I said. "I want you to hear another opinion besides 
mine."
I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. I knocked 
at the door of communication with the front room. It was opened instantly by the 
Major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.
"Will you come and speak to Eustace?" I began. "If you will only say what I want 
you to say--"
Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened and closed. Major 
Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They looked at each other in silence.
I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in which I had seen 
Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.



CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAN'S DECISION. 



MY first impulse was the reckless impulse to follow Eustace--openly through the 
streets.
The Major and Benjamin both opposed this hasty resolution on my part. They 
appealed to my own sense of self-respect, without (so far as I remember it) 
producing the slightest effect on my mind. They were more successful when they 
entreated me next to be patient for my husband's sake. In mercy to Eustace, they 
begged me to wait half an hour. If he failed to return in that time, they 
pledged themselves to accompany me in search of him to the hotel.
In mercy to Eustace I consented to wait. What I suffered under the forced 
necessity for remaining passive at that crisis in my life no words of mine can 
tell. It will be better if I go on with my narrative.
Benjamin was the first to ask me what had passed between my husband and myself.
"You may speak freely, my dear," he said. "I know what has happened since you 
have been in Major Fitz-David's house. No one has told me about it; I found it 
out for myself. If you remember, I was struck by the name of 'Macallan,' when 
you first mentioned it to me at my cottage. I couldn't guess why at the time. I 
know why now."
Hearing this, I told them both unreservedly what I had said to Eustace, and how 
he had received it. To my unspeakable disappointment, they both sided with my 
husband, treating my view of his position as a mere dream. They said it, as he 
had said it, "You have not read the Trial."
I was really enraged with them. "The facts are enough for me," I said. "We know 
he is innocent. Why is his innocence not proved? It ought to be, it must be, it 
shall be! If the Trial tell me it can't be done, I refuse to believe the Trial. 
Where is the book, Major? Let me see for myself if his lawyers have left nothing 
for his wife to do. Did they love him as I love him? Give me the book!"
Major Fitz-David looked at Benjamin.
"It will only additionally shock and distress her if I give her the book," he 
said. "Don't you agree with me?"
I interposed before Benjamin could answer.
"If you refuse my request," I said, "you will oblige me, Major, to go to the 
nearest bookseller and tell him to buy the Trial for me. I am determined to read 
it."
This time Benjamin sided with me.
"Nothing can make matters worse than they are, sir," he said. "If I may be 
permitted to advise, let her have her own way."
The Major rose and took the book out of the Italian cabinet, to which he had 
consigned it for safe-keeping.
"My young friend tells me that she informed you of her regrettable outbreak of 
temper a few days since," he said as he handed me the volume. "I was not aware 
at the time what book she had in her hand when she so far forgot herself as to 
destroy the vase. When I left you in the study, I supposed the Report of the 
Trial to be in its customary place on the top shelf of the book-case, and I own 
I felt some curiosity to know whether you would think of examining that shelf. 
The broken vase--it is needless to conceal it from you now--was one of a pair 
presented to me by your husband and his first wife only a week before the poor 
woman's terrible death. I felt my first presentiment that you were on the brink 
of discovery when I found you looking at the fragments, and I fancy I betrayed 
to you that something of the sort was disturbing me. You looked as if you 
noticed it."
"I did notice it, Major. And I too had a vague idea that I was on the way to 
discovery. Will you look at your watch? Have we waited half an hour yet?"
My impatience had misled me. The ordeal of the half-hour was not yet at an end.
Slowly and more slowly the heavy minutes followed each other, and still there 
were no signs of my husband's return. We tried to continue our conversation, and 
failed. Nothing was audible; no sounds but the ordinary sounds of the street 
disturbed the dreadful silence. Try as I might to repel it, there was one 
foreboding thought that pressed closer and closer on my mind as the interval of 
waiting wore its weary way on. I shuddered as I asked myself if our married life 
had come to an end--if Eustace had really left me.
The Major saw what Benjamin's slower perception had not yet discovered--that my 
fortitude was beginning to sink under the unrelieved oppression of suspense.
"Come!" he said. "Let us go to the hotel."
It then wanted nearly five minutes to the half-hour. I looked my gratitude to 
Major Fitz-David for sparing me those last minutes: I could not speak to him or 
to Benjamin. In silence we three got into a cab and drove to the hotel.
The landlady met us in the hall. Nothing had been seen or heard of Eustace. 
There was a letter waiting for me upstairs on the table in our sitting-room. It 
had been left at the hotel by a messenger only a few minutes since.
Trembling and breathless, I ran up the stairs, the two gentlemen following me. 
The address of the letter was in my husband's handwriting. My heart sank in me 
as I looked at the lines; there could be but one reason for his writing to me. 
That closed envelope held his farewell words. I sat with the letter on my lap, 
stupefied, incapable of opening it.
Kind-hearted Benjamin attempted to comfort and encourage me. The Major, with his 
larger experience of women, warned the old man to be silent.
"Wait!" I heard him whisper. "Speaking to her will do no good now. Give her 
time."
Acting on a sudden impulse, I held out the letter to him as he spoke. Even 
moments might be of importance, if Eustace had indeed left me. To give me time 
might be to lose the opportunity of recalling him.
"You are his old friend," I said. "Open his letter, Major, and read it for me."
Major Fitz-David opened the letter and read it through to himself. When he had 
done he threw it on the table with a gesture which was almost a gesture of 
contempt.
"There is but one excuse for him," he said. "The man is mad."
Those words told me all. I knew the worst; and, knowing it, I could read the 
letter. It ran thus:



"MY BELOVED VALERIA--When you read these lines you read my farewell words. I 
return to my solitary unfriended life--my life before I knew you.
"My darling, you have been cruelly treated. You have been entrapped into 
marrying a man who has been publicly accused of poisoning his first wife--and 
who has not been honorably and completely acquitted of the charge. And you know 
it!
"Can you live on terms of mutual confidence and mutual esteem with me when I 
have committed this fraud, and when I stand toward you in this position? It was 
possible for you to live with me happily while you were in ignorance of the 
truth. It is not possible, now you know all.
"No! the one atonement I can make is--to leave you. Your one chance of future 
happiness is to be disassociated, at once and forever, from my dishonored life. 
I love you, Valeria--truly, devotedly, passionately. But the specter of the 
poisoned woman rises between us. It makes no difference that I am innocent even 
of the thought of harming my first wife. My innocence has not been proved. In 
this world my innocence can never be proved. You are young and loving, and 
generous and hopeful. Bless others, Valeria, with your rare attractions and your 
delightful gifts. They are of no avail with me. The poisoned woman stands 
between us. If you live with me now, you will see her as I see her. That torture 
shall never be yours. I love you. I leave you.
"Do you think me hard and cruel? Wait a little, and time will change that way of 
thinking. As the years go on you will say to yourself, 'Basely as he deceived 
me, there was some generosity in him. He was man enough to release me of his own 
free will.'
"Yes, Valeria, I fully, freely release you. If it be possible to annul our 
marriage, let it be done. Recover your liberty by any means that you may be 
advised to employ; and be assured beforehand of my entire and implicit 
submission. My lawyers have the necessary instructions on this subject. Your 
uncle has only to communicate with them, and I think he will be satisfied of my 
resolution to do you justice. The one interest that I have now left in life is 
my interest in your welfare and your happiness in the time to come. Your welfare 
and your happiness are no longer to be found in your union with Me.
"I can write no more. This letter will wait for you at the hotel. It will be 
useless to attempt to trace me. I know my own weakness. My heart is all yours: I 
might yield to you if I let you see me again.
"Show these lines to your uncle, and to any friends whose opinions you may 
value. I have only to sign my dishonored name, and every one will understand and 
applaud my motive for writing as I do. The name justifies--amply justifies--the 
letter. Forgive and forget me. Farewell.
"EUSTACE MACALLAN."



In those words he took his leave of me. We had then been married--six days.



CHAPTER XIV.
THE WOMAN'S ANSWER.



THUS far I have written of myself with perfect frankness, and, I think I may 
fairly add, with some courage as well. My frankness fails me and my courage 
fails me when I look back to my husband's farewell letter, and try to recall the 
storm of contending passions that it roused in my mind. No! I cannot tell the 
truth about myself--I dare not tell the truth about myself--at that terrible 
time. Men! consult your observation of women, and imagine what I felt; women! 
look into your own hearts, and see what I felt, for yourselves.
What I did, when my mind was quiet again, is an easier matter to deal with. I 
answered my husband's letter. My reply to him shall appear in these pages. It 
will show, in some degree, what effect (of the lasting sort) his desertion of me 
produced on my mind. It will also reveal the motives that sustained me, the 
hopes that animated me, in the new and strange life which my next chapters must 
describe.



I was removed from the hotel in the care of my fatherly old friend, Benjamin. A 
bedroom was prepared for me in his little villa. There I passed the first night 
of my separation from my husband. Toward the morning my weary brain got some 
rest--I slept.
At breakfast-time Major Fitz-David called to inquire about me. He had kindly 
volunteered to go and speak for me to my husband's lawyers on the preceding day. 
They had admitted that they knew where Eustace had gone, but they declared at 
the same time that they were positively forbidden to communicate his address to 
any one. In other respects their "instructions" in relation to the wife of their 
client were (as they were pleased to express it) "generous to a fault." I had 
only to write to them, and they would furnish me with a copy by return of post.
This was the Major's news. He refrained, with the tact that distinguished him, 
from putting any questions to me beyond questions relating to the state of my 
health. These answered, he took his leave of me for that day. He and Benjamin 
had a long talk together afterward in the garden of the villa.
I retired to my room and wrote to my uncle Starkweather, telling him exactly 
what had happened, and inclosing him a copy of my husband's letter. This done, I 
went out for a little while to breathe the fresh air and to think. I was soon 
weary, and went back again to my room to rest. My kind old Benjamin left me at 
perfect liberty to be alone as long as I pleased. Toward the afternoon I began 
to feel a little more like my old self again. I mean by this that I could think 
of Eustace without bursting out crying, and could speak to Benjamin without 
distressing and frightening the dear old man.
That night I had a little more sleep. The next morning I was strong enough to 
confront the first and foremost duty that I now owed to myself--the duty of 
answering my husband's letter.
I wrote to him in these words:



"I am still too weak and weary, Eustace, to write to you at any length. But my 
mind is clear. I have formed my own opinion of you and your letter; and I know 
what I mean to do now you have left me. Some women, in my situation, might think 
that you had forfeited all right to their confidence. I don't think that. So I 
write and tell you what is in my mind in the plainest and fewest words that I 
can use.
"You say you love me--and you leave me. I don't understand loving a woman and 
leaving her. For my part, in spite of the hard things you have said and written 
to me, and in spite of the cruel manner in which you have left me, I love 
you--and I won't give you up. No! As long as I live I mean to live your wife.
"Does this surprise you? It surprises me. If another woman wrote in this manner 
to a man who had behaved to her as you have behaved, I should be quite at a loss 
to account for her conduct. I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. 
I ought to hate you, and yet I can't help loving you. I am ashamed of myself; 
but so it is.
"You need feel no fear of my attempting to find out where you are, and of my 
trying to persuade you to return to me. I am not quite foolish enough to do 
that. You are not in a fit state of mind to return to me. You are all wrong, all 
over, from head to foot. When you get right again, I am vain enough to think 
that you will return to me of your own accord. And shall I be weak enough to 
forgive you? Yes! I shall certainly be weak enough to forgive you.
"But how are you to get right again?
"I have puzzled my brains over this question by night and by day, and my opinion 
is that you will never get right again unless I help you.
"How am I to help you?
"That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do for you, your 
Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said when we were together in the 
back room at Major Fitz-David's house? I told you that the first thought that 
came to me, when I heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of 
setting their vile Verdict right. Well! Your letter has fixed this idea more 
firmly in my mind than ever. The only chance that I can see of winning you back 
to me, in the character of a penitent and loving husband, is to change that 
underhand Scotch Verdict of Not Proven into an honest English Verdict of Not 
Guilty.
"Are you surprised at the knowledge of the law which this way of writing betrays 
in an ignorant woman? I have been learning, my dear: the Law and the Lady have 
begun by understanding one another. In plain English, I have looked into 
Ogilvie's 'Imperial Dictionary,' and Ogilvie tells me, 'A verdict of Not Proven 
only indicates that, in the opinion of the jury, there is a deficiency in the 
evidence to convict the prisoner. A verdict of Not Guilty imports the jury's 
opinion that the prisoner is innocent.' Eustace, that shall be the opinion of 
the world in general, and of the Scotch jury in particular, in your case. To 
that one object I dedicate my life to come, if God spare me!
"Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know. There was a time 
when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand together in doing this good 
work. That hope is at an end. I no longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A 
man who thinks as you think can give no help to anybody--it is his miserable 
condition to have no hope. So be it! I will hope for two, and will work for two; 
and I shall find some one to help me--never fear--if I deserve it.
"I will say nothing about my plans--I have not read the Trial yet. It is quite 
enough for me that I know you are innocent. When a man is innocent, there must 
be a way of proving it: the one thing needful is to find the way. Sooner or 
later, with or without assistance, I shall find it. Yes! before I know any 
single particular of the Case, I tell you positively--I shall find it!
"You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I 
don't pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. 
Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before 
the world, without a stain on his character or his name--thanks to his wife.
"Write to me, sometimes, Eustace; and believe me, through all the bitterness of 
this bitter business, your faithful and loving
"VALERIA."



There was my reply! Poor enough as a composition (I could write a much better 
letter now), it had, if I may presume to say so, one merit. It was the honest 
expression of what I really meant and felt.
I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary gesture when he 
was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. "It seems the rashest letter that ever 
was written," said the dear old man. "I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing 
what you propose to do. Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. 
I wish your uncle Starkweather was here: I wonder what he would say? Oh, dear 
me, what a letter from a wife to a husband! Do you really mean to send it to 
him?"
I added immeasurably to my old friend's surprise by not even employing the 
post-office. I wished to see the "instructions" which my husband had left behind 
him. So I took the letter to his lawyers myself.
The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me together. One was a 
soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other was a hard, fat man, with 
ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great dislike to both of them. On their side, 
they appeared to feel a strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They 
showed me my husband's "instructions," providing, among other things, for the 
payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to his wife. I 
positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.
The lawyers were unaffectedly shocked and astonished at this decision. Nothing 
of the sort had ever happened before in the whole course of their experience. 
They argued and remonstrated with me. The partner with the ill-tempered eyebrows 
wanted to know what my reasons were. The partner with the sour smile reminded 
his colleague satirically that I was a lady, and had therefore no reasons to 
give. I only answered, "Be so good as to forward my letter, gentlemen," and left 
them.
I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which I do not 
honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me to accept help from 
Eustace, now that he had left me. My own little fortune (eight hundred a year) 
had been settled on myself when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a 
single woman, and I was resolved that it should be enough for me now. Benjamin 
had insisted on my considering his cottage as my home. Under these 
circumstances, the expenses in which my determination to clear my husband's 
character might involve me were the only expenses for which I had to provide. I 
could afford to be independent, and independent I resolved that I would be.
While I am occupied in confessing my weakness and my errors, it is only right to 
add that, dearly as I still loved my unhappy, misguided husband, there was one 
little fault of his which I found it not easy to forgive.
Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing from me that he 
had been married to a first wife. Why I should have felt this so bitterly as I 
did, at certain times and seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the 
bottom of it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being 
jealous--especially when I thought of the poor creature's miserable death. 
Still, Eustace ought not to have kept that secret from me, I used to think to 
myself, at odd times when I was discouraged and out of temper. What would he 
have said if I had been a widow, and had never told him of it?
It was getting on toward evening when I returned to the cottage. Benjamin 
appeared to have been on the lookout for me. Before I could ring at the bell he 
opened the garden gate.
"Prepare yourself for a surprise, my dear," he said. "Your uncle, the Reverend 
Doctor Starkweather, has arrived from the North, and is waiting to see you. He 
received your letter this morning, and he took the first train to London as soon 
as he had read it."
In another minute my uncle's strong arms were round me. In my forlorn position, 
I felt the good vicar's kindness, in traveling all the way to London to see me, 
very gratefully. It brought the tears into my eyes--tears, without bitterness, 
that did me good.
"I have come, my dear child, to take you back to your old home," he said. "No 
words can tell how fervently I wish you had never left your aunt and me. Well! 
well! we won't talk about it. The mischief is done, and the next thing is to 
mend it as well as we can. If I could only get within arm's-length of that 
husband of yours, Valeria--There! there! God forgive me, I am forgetting that I 
am a clergyman. What shall I forget next, I wonder? By-the-by, your aunt sends 
you her dearest love. She is more superstitious than ever. This miserable 
business doesn't surprise her a bit. She says it all began with your making that 
mistake about your name in signing the church register. You remember? Was there 
ever such stuff? Ah, she's a foolish woman, that wife of mine! But she means 
well--a good soul at bottom. She would have traveled all the way here along with 
me if I would have let her. I said, 'No; you stop at home, and look after the 
house and the parish, and I'll bring the child back.' You shall have your old 
bedroom, Valeria, with the white curtains, you know, looped up with blue! We 
will return to the Vicarage (if you can get up in time) by the nine-forty train 
to-morrow morning."
Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to gain what was 
now the one object of my existence if I buried myself in a remote north-country 
village? It was simply impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his 
return to his own house.
"I thank you, uncle, with all my heart," I said. "But I am afraid I can't leave 
London for the present."
"You can't leave London for the present?" he repeated. "What does the girl mean, 
Mr. Benjamin?" Benjamin evaded a direct reply.
"She is kindly welcome here, Doctor Starkweather," he said, "as long as she 
chooses to stay with me."
"That's no answer," retorted my uncle, in his rough-and-ready way. He turned to 
me. "What is there to keep you in London?" he asked. "You used to hate London. I 
suppose there is some reason?"
It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take him into my 
confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it but to rouse my courage, 
and tell him frankly what I had it in my mind to do. The vicar listened in 
breathless dismay. He turned to Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in 
his face, when I had done.
"God help her!" cried the worthy man. "The poor thing's troubles have turned her 
brain!"
"I thought you would disapprove of it, sir," said Benjamin, in his mild and 
moderate way. "I confess I disapprove of it myself."
"'Disapprove of it' isn't the word," retorted the vicar. "Don't put it in that 
feeble way, if you please. An act of madness--that's what it is, if she really 
mean what she says." He turned my way, and looked as he used to look at the 
afternoon service when he was catechising an obstinate child. "You don't mean 
it," he said, "do you?"
"I am sorry to forfeit your good opinion, uncle," I replied. "But I must own 
that I do certainly mean it."
"In plain English," retorted the vicar, "you are conceited enough to think that 
you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in Scotland have failed. They 
couldn't prove this man's innocence, all working together. And you are going to 
prove it single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman," cried my 
uncle, suddenly descending from indignation to irony. "May a plain country 
parson, who isn't used to lawyers in petticoats, be permitted to ask how you 
mean to do it?"
"I mean to begin by reading the Trial, uncle."
"Nice reading for a young woman! You will be wanting a batch of nasty French 
novels next. Well, and when you have read the Trial--what then? Have you thought 
of that?"
"Yes, uncle; I have thought of that. I shall first try to form some conclusion 
(after reading the Trial) as to the guilty person who really committed the 
crime. Then I shall make out a list of the witnesses who spoke in my husband's 
defense. I shall go to those witnesses, and tell them who I am and what I want. 
I shall ask all sorts of questions which grave lawyers might think it beneath 
their dignity to put. I shall be guided, in what I do next, by the answers I 
receive. And I shall not be discouraged, no matter what difficulties are thrown 
in my way. Those are my plans, uncle, so far as I know them now."
The vicar and Benjamin looked at each other as if they doubted the evidence of 
their own senses. The vicar spoke.
"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you are going roaming about the country 
to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers, and to risk whatever rough 
reception you may get in the course of your travels? You! A young woman! 
Deserted by your husband! With nobody to protect you! Mr. Benjamin, do you hear 
her? And can you believe your ears? I declare to Heaven I don't know whether I 
am awake or dreaming. Look at her--just look at her! There she sits as cool and 
easy as if she had said nothing at all extraordinary, and was going to do 
nothing out of the common way! What am I to do with her?--that's the serious 
question--what on earth am I to do with her?"
"Let me try my experiment, uncle, rash as it may look to you," I said. "Nothing 
else will comfort and support me; and God knows I want comfort and support. 
Don't think me obstinate. I am ready to admit that there are serious 
difficulties in my way."
The vicar resumed his ironical tone.
"Oh!" he said. "You admit that, do you? Well, there is something gained, at any 
rate."
"Many another woman before me," I went on, "has faced serious difficulties, and 
has conquered them--for the sake of the man she loved."
Doctor Starkweather rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a person whose 
capacity of toleration had reached its last limits.
"Am I to understand that you are still in love with Mr. Eustace Macallan?" he 
asked.
"Yes," I answered.
"The hero of the great Poison Trial?" pursued my uncle. "The man who has 
deceived and deserted you? You love him?"
"I love him more dearly than ever."
"Mr. Benjamin," said the vicar, "if she recover her senses between this and nine 
o'clock to-morrow morning, send her with her luggage to Loxley's Hotel, where I 
am now staying. Good-night, Valeria. I shall consult with your aunt as to what 
is to be done next. I have no more to say."
"Give me a kiss, uncle, at parting."
"Oh yes, I'll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I shall be sixty-five 
next birthday; and I thought I knew something of women, at my time of life. It 
seems I know nothing. Loxley's Hotel is the address, Mr. Benjamin. Good-night."
Benjamin looked very grave when he returned to me after accompanying Doctor 
Starkweather to the garden gate.
"Pray be advised, my dear," he said. "I don't ask you to consider my view of 
this matter, as good for much. But your uncle's opinion is surely worth 
considering?"
I did not reply. It was useless to say any more. I made up my mind to be 
misunderstood and discouraged, and to bear it. "Good-night, my dear old friend," 
was all I said to Benjamin. Then I turned away--I confess with the tears in my 
eyes--and took refuge in my bedroom.
The window-blind was up, and the autumn moonlight shone brilliantly into the 
little room.
As I stood by the window, looking out, the memory came to me of another 
moonlight night, when Eustace and I were walking together in the Vicarage garden 
before our marriage. It was the night of which I have written, many pages back, 
when there were obstacles to our union, and when Eustace had offered to release 
me from my engagement to him. I saw the dear face again looking at me in the 
moonlight; I heard once more his words and mine. "Forgive me," he had said, "for 
having loved you--passionately, devotedly loved you. Forgive me, and let me go."
And I had answered, "Oh, Eustace, I am only a woman--don't madden me! I can't 
live without you. I must and will be your wife!" And now, after marriage had 
united us, we were parted! Parted, still loving each as passionately as ever. 
And why? Because he had been accused of a crime that he had never committed, and 
because a Scotch jury had failed to see that he was an innocent man.
I looked at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these 
thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself. "Neither relations 
nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband's cause.
The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will begin it 
to-night."
I drew down the blind and lighted the candles. In the quiet night, alone and 
unaided, I took my first step on the toilsome and terrible journey that lay 
before me. From the title-page to the end, without stopping to rest and without 
missing a word, I read the Trial of my husband for the murder of his wife.






PART II. 
PARADISE REGAINED.










CHAPTER XV.
THE STORY OF THE TRIAL. 
THE PRELIMINARIES. 



LET me confess another weakness, on my part, before I begin the Story of the 
Trial. I cannot prevail upon myself to copy, for the second time, the horrible 
title-page which holds up to public ignominy my husband's name. I have copied it 
once in my tenth chapter. Let once be enough.
Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring the reader of 
the absolute correctness of the Report of the Proceedings. The compiler 
described himself as having enjoyed certain special privileges. Thus, the 
presiding Judge had himself revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the 
chief lawyers for the prosecution and the defense, following the Judge's 
example, had revised their speeches for and against the prisoner. Lastly, 
particular care had been taken to secure a literally correct report of the 
evidence given by the various witnesses. It was some relief to me to discover 
this Note, and to be satisfied at the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in 
every particular, fully and truly given.
The next page interested me more nearly still. It enumerated the actors in the 
Judicial Drama--the men who held in their hands my husband's honor and my 
husband's life. Here is the List: 



THE LORD JUSTICE CLERK,}
LORD DRUMFENNICK, }Judges on the Bench.
LORD NOBLEKIRK, }

THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mintlaw), }
DONALD DREW, Esquire (Advocate-Depute).} Counsel for the Crown.
MR. JAMES ARLISS, W. S., Agent for the Crown.

THE DEAN OF FACULTY (Farmichael), } Counsel for the Panel
ALEXANDER CROCKET, Esquire (Advocate),} (otherwise the Prisoner)

MR. THORNIEBANK, W. S.,}
MR. PLAYMORE, W. S., } Agents for the Panel.



The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not copy the uncouth 
language, full of needless repetitions (and, if I know anything of the subject, 
not guiltless of bad grammar as well), in which my innocent husband was solemnly 
and falsely accused of poisoning his first wife. The less there is of that false 
and hateful Indictment on this page, the better and truer the page will look, to 
my eyes.
To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was "indicted and accused, at the instance 
of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her Majesty's Advocate, for Her Majesty's interest," 
of the Murder of his Wife by poison, at his residence called Gleninch, in the 
county of Mid-Lothian. The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and 
feloniously given by the prisoner to his wife Sara, on two occasions, in the 
form of arsenic, administered in tea, medicine, "or other article or articles of 
food or drink, to the prosecutor unknown." It was further declared that the 
prisoner's wife had died of the poison thus administered by her husband, on one 
or other, or both, of the stated occasions; and that she was thus murdered by 
her husband. The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace Macallan, taken 
before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate, Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian, did in 
his presence at Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October), 
subscribe a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this 
Declaration being reserved in the Indictment--together with certain documents, 
papers and articles, enumerated in an Inventory--to be used in evidence against 
the prisoner. The Indictment concluded by declaring that, in the event of the 
offense charged against the prisoner being found proven by the Verdict, he, the 
said Eustace Macallan, "ought to be punished with the pains of the law, to deter 
others from committing like crimes in all time coming."
So much for the Indictment! I have done with it--and I am rejoiced to be done 
with it.
An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great length on the 
next three pages. This, in its turn, was succeeded by the list of the witnesses, 
and by the names of the jurors (fifteen in number) balloted for to try the case. 
And then, at last, the Report of the Trial began. It resolved itself, to my 
mind, into three great Questions. As it appeared to me at the time, so let me 
present it here.



CHAPTER XVI.
FIRST QUESTION--DID THE WOMAN DIE POISONED?



THE proceedings began at ten o'clock. The prisoner was placed at the Bar, before 
the High Court of Justiciary, at Edinburgh. He bowed respectfully to the Bench, 
and pleaded Not Guilty, in a low voice.
It was observed by every one present that the prisoner's face betrayed traces of 
acute mental suffering. He was deadly pale. His eyes never once wandered to the 
crowd in the Court. When certain witnesses appeared against him, he looked at 
them with a momentary attention. At other times he kept his eyes on the ground. 
When the evidence touched on his wife's illness and death, he was deeply 
affected, and covered his face with his hands. It was a subject of general 
remark and general surprise that the prisoner, in this case (although a man), 
showed far less self-possession than the last prisoner tried in that Court for 
murder--a woman, who had been convicted on overwhelming evidence. There were 
persons present (a small minority only) who considered this want of composure on 
the part of the prisoner to be a sign in his favor. Self-possession, in his 
dreadful position, signified, to their minds, the stark insensibility of a 
heartless and shameless criminal, and afforded in itself a presumption, not of 
innocence, but of guilt.
The first witness called was John Daviot, Esquire, Sheriff-Substitute of 
Mid-Lothian. He was examined by the Lord Advocate (as counsel for the 
prosecution); and said:
"The prisoner was brought before me on the present charge. He made and 
subscribed a Declaration on the 29th of October. It was freely and voluntarily 
made, the prisoner having been first duly warned and admonished."
Having identified the Declaration, the Sheriff-Substitute--being cross-examined 
by the Dean of Faculty (as counsel for the defense)--continued his evidence in 
these words:
"The charge against the prisoner was Murder. This was communicated to him before 
he made the Declaration. The questions addressed to the prisoner were put partly 
by me, partly by another officer, the procurator-fiscal. The answers were given 
distinctly, and, so far as I could judge, without reserve. The statements put 
forward in the Declaration were all made in answer to questions asked by the 
procurator-fiscal or by myself."
A clerk in the Sheriff-Clerk's office then officially produced the Declaration, 
and corroborated the evidence of the witness who had preceded him.
The appearance of the next witness created a marked sensation in the Court. This 
was no less a person than the nurse who had attended Mrs. Macallan in her last 
illness--by name Christina Ormsay.
After the first formal answers, the nurse (examined by the Lord Advocate) 
proceeded to say:
"I was first sent for to attend the deceased lady on the 7th of October. She was 
then suffering from a severe cold, accompanied by a rheumatic affection of the 
left knee-joint. Previous to this I understood that her health had been fairly 
good. She was not a very difficult person to nurse when you got used to her, and 
understood how to manage her. The main difficulty was caused by her temper. She 
was not a sullen person; she was headstrong and violent--easily excited to fly 
into a passion, and quite reckless in her fits of anger as to what she said or 
did. At such times I really hardly think she knew what she was about. My own 
idea is that her temper was made still more irritable by unhappiness in her 
married life. She was far from being a reserved person. Indeed, she was dis 
posed (as I thought) to be a little too communicative about herself and her 
troubles with persons like me who were beneath her in station. She did not 
scruple, for instance, to tell me (when we had been long enough together to get 
used to each other) that she was very unhappy, and fretted a good deal about her 
husband. One night, when she was wakeful and restless, she said to me--"
The Dean of Faculty here interposed, speaking on the prisoner's behalf. He 
appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and unreliable evidence as this 
was evidence which could be received by the Court.
The Lord Advocate (speaking on behalf of the Crown) claimed it as his right to 
produce the evidence. It was of the utmost importance in this case to show (on 
the testimony of an unprejudiced witness) on what terms the husband and wife 
were living. The witness was a most respectable woman. She had won, and 
deserved, the confidence of the unhappy lady whom she attended on her death-bed.
After briefly consulting together, the Judges unanimously decided that the 
evidence could not be admitted. What the witness had herself seen and observed 
of the relations between the husband and wife was the only evidence that they 
could receive.
The Lord Advocate thereupon continued his examination of the witness. Christina 
Ormsay resumed her evidence as follows:
"My position as nurse led necessarily to my seeing more of Mrs. Macallan than 
any other person in the house. I am able to speak from experience of many things 
not known to others who were only in her room at intervals.
"For instance, I had more than one opportunity of personally observing that Mr. 
and Mrs. Macallan did not live together very happily. I can give you an example 
of this, not drawn from what others told me, but from what I noticed for myself.
"Toward the latter part of my attendance on Mrs. Macallan, a young widow lady 
named Mrs. Beauly--a cousin of Mr. Macallan's--came to stay at Gleninch. Mrs. 
Macallan was jealous of this lady; and she showed it in my presence only the day 
before her death, when Mr. Macallan came into her room to inquire how she had 
passed the night. 'Oh,' she said, 'never mind how I have slept! What do you care 
whether I sleep well or ill? How has Mrs. Beauly passed the night? Is she more 
beautiful than ever this morning? Go back to her--pray go back to her! Don't 
waste your time with me!' Beginning in that manner, she worked herself into one 
of her furious rages. I was brushing her hair at the time; and feeling that my 
presence was an impropriety under the circumstances, I attempted to leave the 
room. She forbade me to go. Mr. Macallan felt, as I did, that my duty was to 
withdraw, and he said so in plain words. Mrs. Macallan insisted on my staying in 
language so insolent to her husband that he said, 'If you cannot control 
yourself, either the nurse leaves the room or I do.' She refused to yield even 
then. 'A good excuse,' she said, 'for getting back to Mrs. Beauly. Go!' He took 
her at her word, and walked out of the room. He had barely closed the door 
before she began reviling him to me in the most shocking manner. She declared, 
among other things she said of him, that the news of all others which he would 
be most glad to hear would be the news of her death. I ventured, quite 
respectfully, on remonstrating with her. She took up the hair-brush and threw it 
at me, and then and there dismissed me from my attendance on her. I left her, 
and waited below until her fit of passion had worn itself out. Then I returned 
to my place at the bedside, and for a while things went on again as usual.
"It may not be amiss to add a word which may help to explain Mrs. Macallan's 
jealousy of her husband's cousin. Mrs. Macallan was a very plain woman. She had 
a cast in one of her eyes, and (if I may use the expression) one of the most 
muddy, blotchy complexions it was ever my misfortune to see in a person's face. 
Mrs. Beauly, on the other hand, was a most attractive lady. Her eyes were 
universally admired, and she had a most beautifully clear and delicate color. 
Poor Mrs. Macallan said of her, most untruly, that she painted.
"No; the defects in the complexion of the deceased lady were not in any way 
attributable to her illness. I should call them born and bred defects in 
herself.
"Her illness, if I am asked to describe it, I should say was 
troublesome--nothing more. Until the last day there were no symptoms in the 
least degree serious about the malady that had taken her. Her rheumatic knee was 
painful, of course--acutely painful, if you like--when she moved it; and the 
confinement to bed was irksome enough, no doubt. But otherwise there was nothing 
in the lady's condition, before the fatal attack came, to alarm her or anybody 
about her. She had her books and her writing materials on an invalid table, 
which worked on a pivot, and could be arranged in any position most agreeable to 
her. At times she read and wrote a good deal. At other times she lay quiet, 
thinking her own thoughts, or talking with me, and with one or two lady friends 
in the neighborhood who came regularly to see her.
"Her writing, so far as I knew, was almost entirely of the poetical sort. She 
was a great hand at composing poetry. On one occasion only she showed me some of 
her poems. I am no judge of such things. Her poetry was of the dismal kind, 
despairing about herself, and wondering why she had ever been born, and nonsense 
like that. Her husband came in more than once for some hard hits at his cruel 
heart and his ignorance of his wife's merits. In short, she vented her 
discontent with her pen as well as with her tongue. There were times--and pretty 
often too--when an angel from heaven would have failed to have satisfied Mrs. 
Macallan.
"Throughout the period of her illness the deceased lady occupied the same 
room--a large bedroom situated (like all the best bedrooms) on the first floor 
of the house.
"Yes: the plan of the room now shown to me is quite accurately taken, according 
to my remembrance of it. One door led into the great passage, or corridor, on 
which all the doors opened. A second door, at one side (marked B on the plan), 
led to Mr. Macallan's sleeping-room. A third door, on the opposite side (marked 
C on the plan), communicated with a little study, or book-room, used, as I was 
told, by Mr. Macallan's mother when she was staying at Gleninch, but seldom or 
never entered by any one else. Mr. Macallan's mother was not at Gleninch while I 
was there. The door between the bedroom and this study was locked, and the key 
was taken out. I don't know who had the key, or whether there were more keys 
than one in existence. The door was never opened to my knowledge. I only got 
into the study, to look at it along with the housekeeper, by entering through a 
second door that opened on to the corridor.
"I beg to say that I can speak from my own knowledge positively about Mrs. 
Macallan's illness, and about the sudden change which ended in her death. By the 
doctor's advice I made notes at the time of dates and hours, and such like. I 
looked at my notes before coming here.
"From the 7th of October, when I was first called in to nurse her, to the 20th 
of the same month, she slowly but steadily improved in health. Her knee was 
still painful, no doubt; but the inflammatory look of it was disappearing. As to 
the other symptoms, except weakness from lying in bed, and irritability of 
temper, there was really nothing the matter with her. She slept badly, I ought 
perhaps to add. But we remedied this by means of composing draughts prescribed 
for that purpose by the doctor.
"On the morning of the 21st, at a few minutes past six, I got my first alarm 
that something was going wrong with Mrs. Macallan.
"I was awoke at the time I have mentioned by the ringing of the hand-bell which 
she kept on her bed-table. Let me say for myself that I had only fallen asleep 
on the sofa in the bedroom at past two in the morning from sheer fatigue. Mrs. 
Macallan was then awake. She was in one of her bad humors with me. I had tried 
to prevail on her to let me remove her dressing-case from her bed-table, after 
she had used it in making her toilet for the night. It took up a great deal of 
room; and she could not possibly want it again before the morning. But no; she 
insisted on my letting it be. There was a glass inside the case; and, plain as 
she was, she never wearied of looking at herself in that glass. I saw that she 
was in a bad state of temper, so I gave her her way, and let the dressing-case 
be. Finding that she was too sullen to speak to me after that, and too obstinate 
to take her composing draught from me when I offered it, I laid me down on the 
sofa at her bed foot, and fell asleep, as I have said.
"The moment her bell rang I was up and at the bedside, ready to make myself 
useful.
"I asked what was the matter with her. She complained of faintness and 
depression, and said she felt sick. I inquired if she had taken anything in the 
way of physic or food while I had been asleep. She answered that her husband had 
come in about an hour since, and, finding her still sleepless, had himself 
administered the composing draught. Mr. Macallan (sleeping in the next room) 
joined us while she was speaking. He too had been aroused by the bell. He heard 
what Mrs. Macallan said to me about the composing draught, and made no remark 
upon it. It seemed to me that he was alarmed at his wife's faintness. I 
suggested that she should take a little wine, or brandy and water. She answered 
that she could swallow nothing so strong as wine or brandy, having a burning 
pain in her stomach already. I put my hand on her stomach--quite lightly. She 
screamed when I touched her.
"This symptom alarmed us. We went to the village for the medical man who had 
attended Mrs. Macallan during her illness: one Mr. Gale.
"The doctor seemed no better able to account for the change for the worse in his 
patient than we were. Hearing her complain of thirst, he gave her some milk. Not 
long after taking it she was sick. The sickness appeared to relieve her. She 
soon grew drowsy and slumbered. Mr. Gale left us, with strict injunctions to 
send for him instantly if she was taken ill again.
"Nothing of the sort happened; no change took place for the next three hours or 
more. She roused up toward half-past nine and inquired about her husband. I 
informed her that he had returned to his own room, and asked if I should send 
for him. She said 'No.' I asked next if she would like anything to eat or drink. 
She said 'No' again, in rather a vacant, stupefied way, and then told me to go 
downstairs and get my breakfast. On my way down I met the housekeeper. She 
invited me to breakfast with her in her room, instead of in the servants' hall 
as usual. I remained with the housekeeper but a short time--certainly not more 
than half an hour.
"Coming upstairs again, I met the under-housemaid sweeping on one of the 
landings.
"The girl informed me that Mrs. Macallan had taken a cup of tea during my 
absence in the housekeeper's room. Mr. Macallan's valet had ordered the tea for 
his mistress by his master's directions. The under-housemaid made it, and took 
it upstairs herself to Mrs. Macallan's room. Her master, she said, opened the 
door when she knocked, and took the tea-cup from her with his own hand. He 
opened the door widely enough for her to see into the bedroom, and to notice 
that nobody was with Mrs. Macallan but himself.
"After a little talk with the under-housemaid, I returned to the bedroom. No one 
was there. Mrs. Macallan was lying perfectly quiet, with her face turned away 
from me on the pillow. Approaching the bedside, I kicked against something on 
the floor. It was a broken tea-cup. I said to Mrs. Macallan, 'How comes the 
tea-cup to be broken, ma'am?' She answered, without turning toward me, in an 
odd, muffled kind of voice, 'I dropped it.' 'Before you drank your tea, ma'am?' 
I asked. 'No,' she said; 'in handing the cup back to Mr. Macallan, after I had 
done.' I had put my question, wishing to know, in case she had spilled the tea 
when she dropped the cup, whether it would be necessary to get her any more. I 
am quite sure I remember correctly my question and her answer. I inquired next 
if she had been long alone. She said, shortly, 'Yes; I have been trying to 
sleep.' I said, 'Do you feel pretty comfortable?' She answered, 'Yes,' again. 
All this time she still kept her face sulkily turned from me toward the wall. 
Stooping over her to arrange the bedclothes, I looked toward her table. The 
writing materials which were always kept on it were disturbed, and there was wet 
ink on one of the pens. I said, 'Surely you haven't been writing, ma'am?' 'Why 
not?' she said; 'I couldn't sleep.' 'Another poem?' I asked. She laughed to 
herself--a bitter, short laugh. 'Yes,' she said, 'another poem.' 'That's good,' 
I said; 'it looks as if you were getting quite like yourself again. We shan't 
want the doctor any more to-day.' She made no answer to this, except an 
impatient sign with her hand. I didn't understand the sign. Upon that she spoke 
again, and crossly enough, too--'I want to be alone; leave me.'
"I had no choice but to do as I was told. To the best of my observation, there 
was nothing the matter with her, and nothing for the nurse to do. I put the 
bell-rope within reach of her hand, and I went downstairs again.
"Half an hour more, as well as I can guess it, passed. I kept within hearing of 
the bell; but it never rang. I was not quite at my ease--without exactly knowing 
why. That odd, muffled voice in which she had spoken to me hung on my mind, as 
it were. I was not quite satisfied about leaving her alone for too long a time 
together--and then, again, I was unwilling to risk throwing her into one of her 
fits of passion by going back before she rang for me. It ended in my venturing 
into the room on the ground-floor called the Morning-Room, to consult Mr. 
Macallan. He was usually to be found there in the forenoon of the day.
"On this occasion, however, when I looked into the Morning-Room it was empty.
"At the same moment I heard the master's voice on the terrace outside. I went 
out, and found him speaking to one Mr. Dexter, an old friend of his, and (like 
Mrs. Beauly) a guest staying in the house. Mr. Dexter was sitting at the window 
of his room upstairs (he was a cripple, and could only move himself about in a 
chair on wheels), and Mr. Macallan was speaking to him from the terrace below.
"'Dexter!' I heard Mr. Macallan say. 'Where is Mrs. Beauly? Have you seen 
anything of her?'
"Mr. Dexter answered, in his quick, off-hand way of speaking, 'Not I. I know 
nothing about her.'
"Then I advanced, and, begging pardon for intruding, I mentioned to Mr. Macallan 
the difficulty I was in about going back or not to his wife's room without 
waiting until she rang for me. Before he could advise me in the matter, the 
footman made his appearance and informed me that Mrs. Macallan's bell was then 
ringing--and ringing violently.
"It was then close on eleven o'clock. As fast as I could mount the stairs I 
hastened back to the bedroom.
"Before I opened the door I heard Mrs. Macallan groaning. She was in dreadful 
pain; feeling a burning heat in the stomach and in the throat, together with the 
same sickness which had troubled her in the early morning. Though no doctor, I 
could see in her face that this second attack was of a far more serious nature 
than the first. After ringing the bell for a messenger to send to Mr. Macallan, 
I ran to the door to see if any of the servants happened to be within call.
"The only person I saw in the corridor was Mrs. Beauly. She was on her way from 
her own room, she said, to inquire after Mrs. Macallan's health. I said to her, 
'Mrs. Macallan is seriously ill again, ma'am. Would you please tell Mr. 
Macallan, and send for the doctor?' She ran downstairs at once to do as I told 
her.
"I had not been long back at the bedside when Mr. Macallan and Mrs. Beauly both 
came in together. Mrs. Macallan cast a strange look on them (a look I cannot at 
all describe), and bade them leave her. Mrs. Beauly, looking very much 
frightened, withdrew immediately. Mr. Macallan advanced a step or two nearer to 
the bed. His wife looked at him again in the same strange way, and cried 
out--half as if she was threatening him, half as if she was entreating 
him--'Leave me with the nurse. Go!' He only waited to say to me in a whisper, 
'The doctor is sent for,' and then he left the room.
"Before Mr. Gale arrived Mrs. Macallan was violently sick. What came from her 
was muddy and frothy, and faintly streaked with blood. When Mr. Gale saw it he 
looked very serious. I heard him say to himself, 'What does this mean?' He did 
his best to relieve Mrs. Macallan, but with no good result that I could see. 
After a time she seemed to suffer less. Then more sickness came on. Then there 
was another intermission. Whether she was suffering or not, I observed that her 
hands and feet (whenever I touched them) remained equally cold. Also, the 
doctor's report of her pulse was always the same--'very small and feeble.' I 
said to Mr. Gale, 'What is to be done, sir?' And Mr. Gale said to me, 'I won't 
take the responsibility on myself any longer; I must have a physician from 
Edinburgh.'
"The fastest horse in the stables at Gleninch was put into a dog-cart, and the 
coachman drove away full speed to Edinburgh to fetch the famous Doctor Jerome.
"While we were waiting for the physician, Mr. Macallan came into his wife's room 
with Mr. Gale. Exhausted as she was, she instantly lifted her hand and signed to 
him to leave her. He tried by soothing words to persuade her to let him stay. 
No! She still insisted on sending him out of her room. He seemed to feel it--at 
such a time, and in the presence of the doctor. Before she was aware of him, he 
suddenly stepped up to the bedside and kissed her on the forehead. She shrank 
from him with a scream. Mr. Gale interfered, and led him out of the room.
"In the afternoon Doctor Jerome arrived.
"The great physician came just in time to see her seized with another attack of 
sickness. He watched her attentively, without speaking a word. In the interval 
when the sickness stopped, he still studied her, as it were, in perfect silence. 
I thought he would never have done examining her. When he was at last satisfied, 
he told me to leave him alone with Mr. Gale. 'We will ring,' he said, 'when we 
want you here again.'
"It was a long time before they rang for me. The coachman was sent for before I 
was summoned back to the bedroom. He was dispatched to Edinburgh for the second 
time, with a written message from Dr. Jerome to his head servant, saying that 
there was no chance of his returning to the city and to his patients for some 
hours to come. Some of us thought this looked badly for Mrs. Macallan. Others 
said it might mean that the doctor had hopes of saving her, but expected to be a 
long time in doing it.
"At last I was sent for. On my presenting myself in the bedroom, Doctor Jerome 
went out to speak to Mr. Macallan, leaving Mr. Gale along with me. From that 
time as long as the poor lady lived I was never left alone with her. One of the 
two doctors was always in her room. Refreshments were prepared for them; but 
still they took it in turns to eat their meal, one relieving the other at the 
bedside. If they had administered remedies to their patient, I should not have 
been surprised by this proceeding. But they were at the end of their remedies; 
their only business the seemed to be to keep watch. I was puzzled to account for 
this. Keeping watch was the nurse's business. I thought the conduct of the 
doctors very strange.
"By the time that the lamp was lighted in the sick-room I could see that the end 
was near. Excepting an occasional feeling of cramp in her legs, she seemed to 
suffer less. But her eyes looked sunk in her head; her skin was cold and clammy; 
her lips had turned to a bluish paleness. Nothing roused her now--excepting the 
last attempt made by her husband to see her. He came in with Doctor Jerome, 
looking like a man terror-struck. She was past speaking; but the moment she saw 
him she feebly made signs and sounds which showed that she was just as resolved 
as ever not to let him come near her. He was so overwhelmed that Mr. Gale was 
obliged to help him out of the room. No other person was allowed to see the 
patient. Mr. Dexter and Mrs. Beauly made their inquiries outside the door, and 
were not invited in. As the evening drew on the doctors sat on either side of 
the bed, silently watching her, silently waiting for her death.
"Toward eight o'clock she seemed to have lost the use of her hands and arms: 
they lay helpless outside the bed-clothes. A little later she sank into a sort 
of dull sleep. Little by little the sound of her heavy breathing grew fainter. 
At twenty minutes past nine Doctor Jerome told me to bring the lamp to the 
bedside. He looked at her, and put his hand on her heart. Then he said to me, 
'You can go downstairs, nurse: it is all over.' He turned to Mr. Gale. 'Will you 
inquire if Mr. Macallan can see us?' he said. I opened the door for Mr. Gale, 
and followed him out. Doctor Jerome called me back for a moment, and told me to 
give him the key of the door. I did so, of course; but I thought this also very 
strange. When I got down to the servants' hall I found there was a general 
feeling that something was wrong. We were all uneasy--without knowing why.
"A little later the two doctors left the house. Mr. Macallan had been quite 
incapable of receiving them and hearing what they had to say. In this difficulty 
they had spoken privately with Mr. Dexter, as Mr. Macallan's old friend, and the 
only gentleman then staying at Gleninch.
"Before bed-time I went upstairs to prepare the remains of the deceased lady for 
the coffin. The room in which she lay was locked, the door leading into Mr. 
Macallan's room being secured, as well as the door leading into the corridor. 
The keys had been taken away by Mr. Gale. Two of the men-servants were posted 
outside the bedroom to keep watch. They were to be relieved at four in the 
morning--that was all they could tell me.
"In the absence of any explanations or directions, I took the liberty of 
knocking at the door of Mr. Dexter's room. From his lips I first heard the 
startling news. Both the doctors had refused to give the usual certificate of 
death! There was to be a medical examination of the body the next morning." 



There the examination of the nurse, Christina Ormsay, came to an end.
Ignorant as I was of the law, I could see what impression the evidence (so far) 
was intended to produce on the minds of the jury. After first showing that my 
husband had had two opportunities of administering the poison--once in the 
medicine and once in the tea--the counsel for the Crown led the jury to infer 
that the prisoner had taken those opportunities to rid himself of an ugly and 
jealous wife, whose detestable temper he could no longer endure.
Having directed his examination to the attainment of this object, the Lord 
Advocate had done with the witness. The Dean of Faculty--acting in the 
prisoner's interests--then rose to bring out the favorable side of the wife's 
character by cross-examining the nurse. If he succeeded in this attempt, the 
jury might reconsider their conclusion that the wife was a person who had 
exasperated her husband beyond endurance. In that case, where (so far) was the 
husband's motive for poisoning her? and where was the presumption of the 
prisoner's guilt?
Pressed by this skillful lawyer, the nurse was obliged to exhibit my husband's 
first wife under an entirely new aspect. Here is the substance of what the Dean 
of Faculty extracted from Christina Ormsay:
"I persist in declaring that Mrs. Macallan had a most violent temper. But she 
was certainly in the habit of making amends for the offense that she gave by her 
violence. When she was quiet again she always made her excuses to me, and she 
made them with a good grace. Her manners were engaging at such times as these. 
She spoke and acted like a well-bred lady. Then, again, as to her personal 
appearance. Plain as she was in face, she had a good figure; her hands and feet, 
I was told, had been modeled by a sculptor. She had a very pleasant voice, and 
she was reported when in health to sing beautifully. She was also (if her maid's 
account was to be trusted) a pattern in the matter of dressing for the other 
ladies in the neighborhood. Then, as to Mrs. Beauly, though she was certainly 
jealous of the beautiful young widow, she had shown at the same time that she 
was capable of controlling that feeling. It was through Mrs. Macallan that Mrs. 
Beauly was in the house. Mrs. Beauly had wished to postpone her visit on account 
of the state of Mrs. Macallan's health. It was Mrs. Macallan herself--not her 
husband--who decided that Mrs. Beauly should not be disappointed, and should pay 
her visit to Gleninch then and there. Further, Mrs. Macallan (in spite of her 
temper) was popular with her friends and popular with her servants. There was 
hardly a dry eye in the house when it was known she was dying. And, further 
still, in those little domestic disagreements at which the nurse had been 
present, Mr. Macallan had never lost his temper, and had never used harsh 
language: he seemed to be more sorry than angry when the quarrels took 
place."--Moral for the jury: Was this the sort of woman who would exasperate a 
man into poisoning her? And was this the sort of man who would be capable of 
poisoning his wife?
Having produced this salutary counter-impression, the Dean of Faculty sat down; 
and the medical witnesses were called next.
Here the evidence was simply irresistible.
Dr. Jerome and Mr. Gale positively swore that the symptoms of the illness were 
the symptoms of poisoning by arsenic. The surgeon who had performed the 
post-mortem examination followed. He positively swore that the appearance of the 
internal organs proved Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale to be right in declaring that 
their patient had died poisoned. Lastly, to complete this overwhelming 
testimony, two analytical chemists actually produced in Court the arsenic which 
they had found in the body, in a quantity admittedly sufficient to have killed 
two persons instead of one. In the face of such evidence as this, 
cross-examination was a mere form. The first Question raised by the Trial--Did 
the Woman Die Poisoned?--was answered in the affirmative, and answered beyond 
the possibility of doubt.
The next witnesses called were witnesses concerned with the question that now 
followed--the obscure and terrible question, Who Poisoned Her?



CHAPTER XVII.
SECOND QUESTION--WHO POISONED HER?.



THE evidence of the doctors and the chemists closed the proceedings on the first 
day of the Trial.
On the second day the evidence to be produced by the prosecution was anticipated 
with a general feeling of curiosity and interest. The Court was now to hear what 
had been seen and done by the persons officially appointed to verify such cases 
of suspected crime as the case which had occurred at Gleninch. The 
Procurator-Fiscal--being the person officially appointed to direct the 
preliminary investigations of the law--was the first witness called on the 
second day of the Trial.
Examined by the Lord Advocate, the Fiscal gave his evidence, as follows:
"On the twenty-sixth of October I received a communication from Doctor Jerome, 
of Edinburgh, and from Mr. Alexander Gale, medical practitioner, residing in the 
village or hamlet of Dingdovie, near Edinburgh. The communication related to the 
death, under circumstances of suspicion, of Mrs. Eustace Macallan, at her 
husband's house, hard by Dingdovie, called Gleninch. There were also forwarded 
to me, inclosed in the document just mentioned, two reports. One described the 
results of a postmortem examination of the deceased lady, and the other stated 
the discoveries made after a chemical analysis of certain of the interior organs 
of her body. The result in both instances proved to demonstration that Mrs. 
Eustace Macallan had died of poisoning by arsenic.
"Under these circumstances, I set in motion a search and inquiry in the house at 
Gleninch and elsewhere, simply for the purpose of throwing light on the 
circumstances which had attended the lady's death.
"No criminal charge in connection with the death was made at my office against 
any person, either in the communication which I received from the medical men or 
in any other form. The investigations at Gleninch and elsewhere, beginning on 
the twenty-sixth of October, were not completed until the twenty-eighth. Upon 
this latter date--acting on certain discoveries which were reported to me, and 
on my own examination of letters and other documents brought to my office--I 
made a criminal charge against the prisoner, and obtained a warrant for his 
apprehension. He was examined before the Sheriff on the twenty-ninth of October, 
and was committed for trial before this Court."
The Fiscal having made his statement, and having been cross-examined (on 
technical matters only), the persons employed in his office were called next. 
These men had a story of startling interest to tell. Theirs were the fatal 
discoveries which had justified the Fiscal in charging my husband with the 
murder of his wife. The first of the witnesses was a sheriff's officer. He gave 
his name as Isaiah Schoolcraft.
Examined by Mr. Drew--Advocate-Depute, and counsel for the Crown, with the Lord 
Advocate--Isaiah Schoolcraft said:
"I got a warrant on the twenty-sixth of October to go to the country-house near 
Edinburgh called Gleninch. I took with me Robert Lorrie, assistant to the 
Fiscal. We first examined the room in which Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died. On 
the bed, and on a movable table which was attached to it, we found books and 
writing materials, and a paper containing some unfinished verses in manuscript, 
afterward identified as being in the handwriting of the deceased. We inclosed 
these articles in paper, and sealed them up.
"We next opened an Indian cabinet in the bedroom. Here we found many more verses 
on many more sheets of paper in the same hand- writing. We also discovered, 
first some letters, and next a crumpled piece of paper thrown aside in a corner 
of one of the shelves. On closer examination, a chemist's printed label was 
discovered on this morsel of paper. We also found in the folds of it a few 
scattered grains of some white powder. The paper and the letters were carefully 
inclosed, and sealed up as before.
"Further investigation of the room revealed nothing which could throw any light 
on the purpose of our inquiry. We examined the clothes, jewelry, and books of 
the deceased. These we left under lock and key. We also found her dressing-case, 
which we protected by seals, and took away with us to the Fiscal's office, along 
with all the other articles that we had discovered in the room.
"The next day we continued our examination in the house, having received in the 
interval fresh instructions from the Fiscal. We began our work in the bedroom 
communicating with the room in which Mrs. Macallan had died. It had been kept 
locked since the death. Finding nothing of any importance here, we went next to 
another room on the same floor, in which we were informed the prisoner was then 
lying ill in bed.
"His illness was described to us as a nervous complaint, caused by the death of 
his wife, and by the proceedings which had followed it. He was reported to be 
quite incapable of exerting himself, and quite unfit to see strangers. We 
insisted nevertheless (in deference to our instructions) on obtaining admission 
to his room. He made no reply when we inquired whether he had or had not removed 
anything from the sleeping-room next to his late wife's, which he usually 
occupied, to the sleeping-room in which he now lay. All he did was to close his 
eyes, as if he were too feeble to speak to us or to notice us. Without further 
disturbing him, we began to examine the room and the different objects in it.
"While we were so employed, we were interrupted by a strange sound. We likened 
it to the rumbling of wheels in the corridor outside.
"The door opened, and there came swiftly in a gentleman--a cripple--wheeling 
himself along in a chair. He wheeled his chair straight up to a little table 
which stood by the prisoner's bedside, and said something to him in a whisper 
too low to be overheard. The prisoner opened his eyes, and quickly answered by a 
sign. We informed the crippled gentleman, quite respectfully, that we could not 
allow him to be in the room at this time. He appeared to think nothing of what 
we said. He only answered, 'My name is Dexter. I am one of Mr. Macallan's old 
friends. It is you who are intruding here--not I.' We again notified to him that 
he must leave the room; and we pointed out particularly that he had got his 
chair in such a position against the bedside table as to prevent us from 
examining it. He only laughed. 'Can't you see for yourselves,' he said, 'that it 
is a table, and nothing more?' In reply to this we warned him that we were 
acting under a legal warrant, and that he might get into trouble if he 
obstructed us in the execution of our duty. Finding there was no moving him by 
fair means, I took his chair and pulled it away, while Robert Lorrie laid hold 
of the table and carried it to the other end of the room. The crippled gentleman 
flew into a furious rage with me for presuming to touch his chair. 'My chair is 
Me,' he said: 'how dare you lay hands on Me?' I first opened the door, and then, 
by way of accommodating him, gave the chair a good push behind with my stick 
instead of my hand, and so sent it and him safely and swiftly out of the room.
"Having locked the door, so as to prevent any further intrusion, I joined Robert 
Lorrie in examining the bedside table. It had one drawer in it, and that drawer 
we found secured.
"We asked the prisoner for the key.
"He flatly refused to give it to us, and said we had no right to unlock his 
drawers. He was so angry that he even declared it was lucky for us he was too 
weak to rise from his bed. I answered civilly that our duty obliged us to 
examine the drawer, and that if he still declined to produce the key, he would 
only oblige us to take the table away and have the lock opened by a smith.
"While we were still disputing there was a knock at the door of the room.
"I opened the door cautiously. Instead of the crippled gentleman, whom I had 
expected to see again, there was another stranger standing outside. The prisoner 
hailed him as a friend and neighbor, and eagerly called upon him for protection 
from us. We found this second gentleman pleasant enough to deal with. He 
informed us readily that he had been sent for by Mr. Dexter, and that he was 
himself a lawyer, and he asked to see our warrant. Having looked at it, he at 
once informed the prisoner (evidently very much to the prisoner's surprise) that 
he must submit to have the drawer examined, under protest. And then, without 
more ado, he got the key, and opened the table drawer for us himself.
"We found inside several letters, and a large book with a lock to it, having the 
words 'My Diary' inscribed on it in gilt letters. As a matter of course, we took 
possession of the letters and the Diary, and sealed them up, to be given to the 
Fiscal. At the same time the gentleman wrote out a protest on the prisoner's 
behalf, and handed us his card. The card informed us that he was Mr. Playmore, 
now one of the Agents for the prisoner. The card and the protest were deposited, 
with the other documents, in the care of the Fiscal. No other discoveries of any 
importance were made at Gleninch.
"Our next inquiries took us to Edinburgh--to the druggist whose label we had 
found on the crumpled morsel of paper, and to other druggists likewise whom we 
were instructed to question. On the twenty-eighth of October the Fiscal was in 
possession of all the information that we could collect, and our duties for the 
time being came to an end."
This concluded the evidence of Schoolcraft and Lorrie. It was not shaken on 
cross-examination, and it was plainly unfavorable to the prisoner.
Matters grew worse still when the next witnesses were called. The druggist whose 
label had been found on the crumpled bit of paper now appeared on the stand, to 
make the position of my unhappy husband more critical than ever.
Andrew Kinlay, druggist, of Edinburgh, deposed as follows:
"I keep a special registry book of the poisons sold by me. I produce the book. 
On the date therein mentioned the prisoner at the bar, Mr. Eustace Macallan, 
came into my shop, and said that he wished to purchase some arsenic. I asked him 
what it was wanted for. He told me it was wanted by his gardener, to be used, in 
solution, for the killing of insects in the greenhouse. At the same time he 
mentioned his name--Mr. Macallan, of Gleninch. I at once directed my assistant 
to put up the arsenic (two ounces of it), and I made the necessary entry in my 
book. Mr. Macallan signed the entry, and I signed it afterward as witness. He 
paid for the arsenic, and took it away with him wrapped up in two papers, the 
outer wrapper being labeled with my name and address, and with the word 'Poison' 
in large letters--exactly like the label now produced on the piece of paper 
found at Gleninch."
The next witness, Peter Stockdale (also a druggist of Edinburgh), followed, and 
said:
"The prisoner at the bar called at my shop on the date indicated on my register, 
some days later than the date indicated in the register of Mr. Kinlay. He wished 
to purchase sixpenny-worth of arsenic. My assistant, to whom he had addressed 
himself, called me. It is a rule in my shop that no one sells poisons but 
myself. I asked the prisoner what he wanted the arsenic for. He answered that he 
wanted it for killing rats at his house, called Gleninch. I said, 'Have I the 
honor of speaking to Mr. Macallan, of Gleninch?' He said that was his name. I 
sold him the arsenic--about an ounce and a half--and labeled the bottle in which 
I put it with the word 'Poison' in my own handwriting. He signed the register, 
and took the arsenic away with him, after paying for it."
The cross-examination of the two men succeeded in asserting certain technical 
objections to their evidence. But the terrible fact that my husband himself had 
actually purchased the arsenic in both cases remained unshaken.
The next witnesses--the gardener and the cook at Gleninch--wound the chain of 
hostile evidence around the prisoner more mercilessly still.
On examination the gardener said, on his oath:
"I never received any arsenic from the prisoner, or from any one else, at the 
date to which you refer, of at any other date. I never used any such thing as a 
solution of arsenic, or ever allowed the men working under me to use it, in the 
conservatories or in the garden at Gleninch. I disapprove of arsenic as a means 
of destroying noxious insects infesting flowers and plants."
The cook, being called next, spoke as positively as the gardener:
"Neither my master nor any other person gave me any arsenic to destroy rats at 
any time. No such thing was wanted. I declare, on my oath, that I never saw any 
rats in or about the house, or ever heard of any rats infesting it."
Other household servants at Gleninch gave similar evidence. Nothing could be 
extracted from them on cross-examination except that there might have been rats 
in the house, though they were not aware of it. The possession of the poison was 
traced directly to my husband, and to no one else. That he had bought it was 
actually proved, and that he had kept it was the one conclusion that the 
evidence justified.
The witnesses who came next did their best to press the charge against the 
prisoner home to him. Having the arsenic in his possession, what had he done 
with it? The evidence led the jury to infer what he had done with it.
The prisoner's valet deposed that his master had rung for him at twenty minutes 
to ten on the morning of the day on which his mistress died, and had ordered a 
cup of tea for her. The man had received the order at the open door of Mrs. 
Macallan's room, and could positively swear that no other person but his master 
was there at the time.
The under-housemaid, appearing next, said that she had made the tea, and had 
herself taken it upstairs before ten o'clock to Mrs. Macallan's room. Her master 
had received it from her at the open door. She could look in, and could see that 
he was alone in her mistress's room.
The nurse, Christina Ormsay, being recalled, repeated what Mrs. Macallan had 
said to her on the day when that lady was first taken ill. She had said 
(speaking to the nurse at six o'clock in the morning), "Mr. Macallan came in 
about an hour since; he found me still sleepless, and gave me my composing 
draught." This was at five o'clock in the morning, while Christina Ormsay was 
asleep on the sofa. The nurse further swore that she had looked at the bottle 
containing the composing mixture, and had seen by the measuring marks on the 
bottle that a dose had been poured out since the dose previously given, 
administered by herself.
On this occasion special interest was excited by the cross-examination. The 
closing questions put to the under-housemaid and the nurse revealed for the 
first time what the nature of the defense was to be.
Cross-examining the under-housemaid, the Dean of Faculty said:
"Did you ever notice when you were setting Mrs. Eustace Macallan's room to 
rights whether the water left in the basin was of a blackish or bluish color?" 
The witness answered, "I never noticed anything of the sort."
The Dean of Faculty went on:
"Did you ever find under the pillow of the bed, or in any other hiding place in 
Mrs. Macallan's room, any books or pamphlets telling of remedies used for 
improving a bad complexion?" The witness answered, "No."
The Dean of Faculty persisted:
"Did you ever hear Mrs. Macallan speak of arsenic, taken as a wash or taken as a 
medicine, as a good thing to improve the complexion?" The witness answered, 
"Never."
Similar questions were next put to the nurse, and were all answered by this 
witness also in the negative.
Here, then, in spite of the negative answers, was the plan of the defense made 
dimly visible for the first time to the jury and to the audience. By way of 
preventing the possibility of a mistake in so serious a matter, the Chief Judge 
(the Lord Justice Clerk) put this plain question, when the witnesses had 
retired, to the Counsel for the defense:
"The Court and the jury," said his lordship, "wish distinctly to understand the 
object of your cross-examination of the housemaid and the nurse. Is it the 
theory of the defense that Mrs. Eustace Macallan used the arsenic which--her 
husband purchased for the purpose of improving the defects of her complexion?"
The Dean of Faculty answered:
"That is what we say, my lord, and what we propose to prove as the foundation of 
the defense. We cannot dispute the medical evidence which declares that Mrs. 
Macallan died poisoned. But we assert that she died of an overdose of arsenic, 
ignorantly taken, in the privacy of her own room, as a remedy for the 
defects--the proved and admitted defects--of her complexion. The prisoner's 
Declaration before the Sheriff expressly sets forth that he purchased the 
arsenic at the request of his wife."
The Lord Justice Clerk inquired upon this if there were any objection on the 
part of either of the learned counsel to have the Declaration read in Court 
before the Trial proceeded further.
To this the Dean of Faculty replied that he would be glad to have the 
Declaration read. If he might use the expression, it would usefully pave the way 
in the minds of the jury for the defense which he had to submit to them.
The Lord Advocate (speaking on the other side) was happy to be able to 
accommodate his learned brother in this matter. So long as the mere assertions 
which the Declaration contained were not supported by proof, he looked upon that 
document as evidence for the prosecution, and he too was quite willing to have 
it read.
Thereupon the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence--on being charged before 
the Sheriff with the murder of his wife--was read, in the following terms:
"I bought the two packets of arsenic, on each occasion at my wife's own request. 
On the first occasion she told me the poison was wanted by the gardener for use 
in the conservatories. On the second occasion she said it was required by the 
cook for ridding the lower part of the house of rats.
"I handed both packets of arsenic to my wife immediately on my return home. I 
had nothing to do with the poison after buying it. My wife was the person who 
gave orders to the gardener and cook--not I. I never held any communication with 
either of them.
"I asked my wife no questions about the use of the arsenic, feeling no interest 
in the subject. I never entered the conservatories for months together; I care 
little about flowers. As for the rats, I left the killing of them to the cook 
and the other servants, just as I should have left any other part of the 
domestic business to the cook and the other servants.
"My wife never told me she wanted the arsenic to improve her complexion. Surely 
I should be the last person admitted to the knowledge of such a secret of her 
toilet as that? I implicitly believed what she told me; viz., that the poison 
was wanted for the purposes specified by the gardener and the cook.
"I assert positively that I lived on friendly terms with my wife, allowing, of 
course, for the little occasional disagreements and misunderstandings of married 
life. Any sense of disappointment in connection with my marriage which I might 
have felt privately I conceived it to be my duty as a husband and a gentleman to 
conceal from my wife. I was not only shocked and grieved by her untimely 
death--I was filled with fear that I had not, with all my care, behaved 
affectionately enough to her in her lifetime.
"Furthermore, I solemnly declare that I know no more of how she took the arsenic 
found in her body than the babe unborn. I am innocent even of the thought of 
harming that unhappy woman. I administered the composing draught exactly as I 
found it in the bottle. I afterward gave her the cup of tea exactly as I 
received it from the under-housemaid's hand. I never had access to the arsenic 
after I placed the two packages in my wife's possession. I am entirely ignorant 
of what she did with them or of where she kept them. I declare before God I am 
innocent of the horrible crime with which I am charged."
With the reading of those true and touching words the proceedings on the second 
day of the Trial came to an end.



So far, I must own, the effect on me of reading the Report was to depress my 
spirits and to lower my hopes. The whole weight of the evidence at the close of 
the second day was against my unhappy husband. Woman as I was, and partisan as I 
was, I could plainly see that.
The merciless Lord Advocate (I confess I hated him!) had proved (1) that Eustace 
had bought the poison; (2) that the reason which he had given to the druggists 
for buying the poison was not the true reason; (3) that he had had two 
opportunities of secretly administering the poison to his wife. On the other 
side, what had the Dean of Faculty proved? As yet--nothing. The assertions in 
the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence were still, as the Lord Advocate had 
remarked, assertions not supported by proof. Not one atom of evidence had been 
produced to show that it was the wife who had secretly used the arsenic, and 
used it for her complexion.
My one consolation was that the reading of the Trial had already revealed to me 
the helpful figures of two friends on whose sympathy I might surely rely. The 
crippled Mr. Dexter had especially shown himself to be a thorough good ally of 
my husband's. My heart warmed to the man who had moved his chair against the 
bedside table--the man who had struggled to the last to defend Eustace's papers 
from the wretches who had seized them. I decided then and there that the first 
person to whom I would confide my aspirations and my hopes should be Mr. Dexter. 
If he felt any difficulty about advising me, I would then apply next to the 
agent, Mr. Playmore--the second good friend, who had formally protested against 
the seizure of my husband's papers.
Fortified by this resolution, I turned the page, and read the history of the 
third day of the Trial.



CHAPTER XVIII.
THIRD QUESTION--WHAT WAS HIS MOTIVE?



THE first question (Did the Woman Die Poisoned?) had been answered, positively. 
The second question (Who Poisoned Her?) had been answered, apparently. There now 
remained the third and final question--What was His Motive? The first evidence 
called in answer to that inquiry was the evidence of relatives and friends of 
the dead wife.
Lady Brydehaven, widow of Rear-Admiral Sir George Brydehaven, examined by Mr. 
Drew (counsel for the Crown with the Lord Advocate), gave evidence as follows:
"The deceased lady (Mrs. Eustace Macallan) was my niece. She was the only child 
of my sister, and she lived under my roof after the time of her mother's death. 
I objected to her marriage, on grounds which were considered purely fanciful and 
sentimental by her other friends. It is extremely painful to me to state the 
circumstances in public, but I am ready to make the sacrifice if the ends of 
justice require it.
"The prisoner at the bar, at the time of which I am now speaking, was staying as 
a guest in my house. He met with an accident while he was out riding which 
caused a serious injury to one of his legs. The leg had been previously hurt 
while he was serving with the army in India. This circumstance tended greatly to 
aggravate the injury received in the accident. He was confined to a recumbent 
position on a sofa for many weeks together; and the ladies in the house took it 
in turns to sit with him, and while away the weary time by reading to him and 
talking to him. My niece was foremost among these volunteer nurses. She played 
admirably on the piano; and the sick man happened--most unfortunately, as the 
event proved--to be fond of music.
"The consequences of the perfectly innocent intercourse thus begun were 
deplorable consequences for my niece. She became passionately attached to Mr. 
Eustace Macallan, without awakening any corresponding affection on his side.
"I did my best to interfere, delicately and usefully, while it was still 
possible to interfere with advantage. Unhappily, my niece refused to place any 
confidence in me. She persistently denied that she was actuated by any warmer 
feeling toward Mr. Macallan than a feeling of friendly interest. This made it 
impossible for me to separate them without openly acknowledging my reason for 
doing so, and thus producing a scandal which might have affected my niece's 
reputation. My husband was alive at that time; and the one thing I could do 
under the circumstances was the thing I did. I requested him to speak privately 
to Mr. Macallan, and to appeal to his honor to help us out of the difficulty 
without prejudice to my niece.
"Mr. Macallan behaved admirably. He was still helpless. But he made an excuse 
for leaving us which it was impossible to dispute. In two days after my husband 
had spoken to him he was removed from the house.
"The remedy was well intended; but it came too late, and it utterly failed. The 
mischief was done. My niece pined away visibly; neither medical help nor change 
of air and scene did anything for her. In course of time--after Mr. Macallan had 
recovered from the effects of his accident--I found that she was carrying on a 
clandestine correspondence with him by means of her maid. His letters, I am 
bound to say, were most considerately and carefully written. Nevertheless, I 
felt it my duty to stop the correspondence.
"My interference--what else could I do but interfere?--brought matters to a 
crisis. One day my niece was missing at breakfast-time. The next day we 
discovered that the poor infatuated creature had gone to Mr. Macallan's chambers 
in London, and had been found hidden in his bedroom by some bachelor friends who 
came to visit him.
"For this disaster Mr. Macallan was in no respect to blame. Hearing footsteps 
outside, he had only time to take measures for saving her character by 
concealing her in the nearest room--and the nearest room happened to be his 
bedchamber. The matter was talked about, of course, and motives were 
misinterpreted in the vilest manner. My husband had another private conversation 
with Mr. Macallan. He again behaved admirably. He publicly declared that my 
niece had visited him as his betrothed wife. In a fortnight from that time he 
silenced scandal in the one way that was possible--he married her.
"I was alone in opposing the marriage. I thought it at the time what it has 
proved to be since--a fatal mistake.
"It would have been sad enough if Mr. Macallan had only married her without a 
particle of love on his side. But to make the prospect more hopeless still, he 
was at that very time the victim of a misplaced attachment to a lady who was 
engaged to another man. I am well aware that he compassionately denied this, 
just as he compassionately affected to be in love with my niece when he married 
her. But his hopeless admiration of the lady whom I have mentioned was a matter 
of fact notorious among his friends. It may not be amiss to add that her 
marriage preceded his marriage. He had irretrievably lost the woman he really 
loved--he was without a hope or an aspiration in life--when he took pity on my 
niece.
"In conclusion, I can only repeat that no evil which could have happened (if she 
had remained a single woman) would have been comparable, in my opinion, to the 
evil of such a marriage as this. Never, I sincerely believe, were two more 
ill-assorted persons united in the bonds of matrimony than the prisoner at the 
bar and his deceased wife."
The evidence of this witness produced a strong sensation among the audience, and 
had a marked effect on the minds of the jury. Cross-examination forced Lady 
Brydehaven to modify some of her opinions, and to acknowledge that the hopeless 
attachment of the prisoner to another woman was a matter of rumor only. But the 
facts in her narrative remained unshaken, and, for that one reason, they 
invested the crime charged against the prisoner with an appearance of 
possibility, which it had entirely failed to assume during the earlier part of 
the Trial.
Two other ladies (intimate friends of Mrs. Eustace Macallan) were called next. 
They differed from Lady Brydehaven in their opinions on the propriety of the 
marriage but on all the material points they supported her testimony, and 
confirmed the serious impression which the first witness had produced on every 
person in Court.
The next evidence which the prosecution proposed to put in was the silent 
evidence of the letters and the Diary found at Gleninch.
In answer to a question from the Bench, the Lord Advocate stated that the 
letters were written by friends of the prisoner and his deceased wife, and that 
passages in them bore directly on the terms on which the two associated in their 
married life. The Diary was still more valuable as evidence. It contained the 
prisoner's daily record of domestic events, and of the thoughts and feelings 
which they aroused in him at the time.
A most painful scene followed this explanation.
Writing, as I do, long after the events took place, I still cannot prevail upon 
myself to describe in detail what my unhappy husband said and did at this 
distressing period of the Trial. Deeply affected while Lady Brydehaven was 
giving her evidence, he had with difficulty restrained himself from interrupting 
her. He now lost all control over his feelings. In piercing tones, which rang 
through the Court, he protested against the contemplated violation of his own 
most sacred secrets and his wife's most sacred secrets. "Hang me, innocent as I 
am!" he cried, "but spare me that!" The effect of this terrible outbreak on the 
audience is reported to have been indescribable. Some of the women present were 
in hysterics. The Judges interfered from the Bench, but with no good result. 
Quiet was at length restored by the Dean of Faculty, who succeeded in soothing 
the prisoner, and who then addressed the Judges, pleading for indulgence to his 
unhappy client in most touching and eloquent language. The speech, a masterpiece 
of impromptu oratory, concluded with a temperate yet strongly urged protest 
against the reading of the papers discovered at Gleninch.
The three Judges retired to consider the legal question submitted to them. The 
sitting was suspended for more than half an hour.
As usual in such cases, the excitement in the Court communicated itself to the 
crowd outside in the street. The general opinion here--led, as it was supposed, 
by one of the clerks or other inferior persons connected with the legal 
proceedings--was decidedly adverse to the prisoner's chance of escaping a 
sentence of death. "If the letters and the Diary are read," said the brutal 
spokesman of the mob, "the letters and the Diary will hang him."
On the return of the Judges into Court, it was announced that they had decided, 
by a majority of two to one, on permitting the documents in dispute to be 
produced in evidence. Each of the Judges, in turn, gave his reasons for the 
decision at which he had arrived. This done, the Trial proceeded. The reading of 
the extracts from the letters and the extracts from the Diary began.
The first letters produced were the letters found in the Indian cabinet in Mrs. 
Eustace Macallan's room. They were addressed to the deceased lady by intimate 
(female) friends of hers, with whom she was accustomed to correspond. Three 
separate extracts from letters written by three different correspondents were 
selected to be read in Court.
FIRST CORRESPONDENT: "I despair, my dearest Sara, of being able to tell you how 
your last letter has distressed me. Pray forgive me if I own to thinking that 
your very sensitive nature exaggerates or misinterprets, quite unconsciously, of 
course, the neglect that you experience at the hands of your husband. I cannot 
say anything about his peculiarities of character, because I am not well enough 
acquainted with him to know what they are. But, my dear, I am much older than 
you, and I have had a much longer experience than yours of what somebody calls 
'the lights and shadows of married life.' Speaking from that experience, I must 
tell you what I have observed. Young married women, like you, who are devotedly 
attached to their husbands, are apt to make one very serious mistake. As a rule, 
they all expect too much from their husbands. Men, my poor Sara, are not like 
us. Their love, even when it is quite sincere, is not like our love. It does not 
last as it does with us. It is not the one hope and one thought of their lives, 
as it is with us. We have no alternative, even when we most truly respect and 
love them, but to make allowance for this difference between the man's nature 
and the woman's. I do not for one moment excuse your husband's coldness. He is 
wrong, for example, in never looking at you when he speaks to you, and in never 
noticing the efforts that you make to please him. He is worse than wrong--he is 
really cruel, if you like--in never returning your kiss when you kiss him. But, 
my dear, are you quite sure that he is always designedly cold and cruel? May not 
his conduct be sometimes the result of troubles and anxieties which weigh on his 
mind, and which are troubles and anxieties that you cannot share? If you try to 
look at his behavior in this light, you will understand many things which puzzle 
and pain you now. Be patient with him, my child. Make no complaints, and never 
approach him with your caresses at times when his mind is preoccupied or his 
temper ruffled. This may be hard advice to follow, loving him as ardently as you 
do. But, rely on it, the secret of happiness for us women is to be found (alas! 
only too often) in such exercise of restraint and resignation as your old friend 
now recommends. Think, my dear, over what I have written, and let me hear from 
you again."
SECOND CORRESPONDENT: "How can you be so foolish, Sara, as to waste your love on 
such a cold-blooded brute as your husband seems to be? To be sure, I am not 
married yet, or perhaps I should not be so surprised at you. But I shall be 
married one of these days, and if my husband ever treat me as Mr. Macallan 
treats you, I shall insist on a separation. I declare, I think I would rather be 
actually beaten, like the women among the lower orders, than be treated with the 
polite neglect and contempt which you describe. I burn with indignation when I 
think of it. It must be quite insufferable. Don't bear it any longer, my poor 
dear. Leave him, and come and stay with me. My brother is a lawyer, as you know. 
I read to him portions of your letter, and he is of opinion that you might get 
what he calls a judicial separation. Come and consult him."
THIRD CORRESPONDENT: "YOU know, my dear Mrs. Macallan, what my experience of men 
has been. Your letter does not surprise me in the least. Your husband's conduct 
to you points to one conclusion. He is in love with some other woman. There is 
Somebody in the dark, who gets from him everything that he denies to you. I have 
been through it all--and I know! Don't give way. Make it the business of your 
life to find out who the creature is. Perhaps there may be more than one of 
them. It doesn't matter. One or many, if you can only discover them, you may 
make his existence as miserable to him as he makes your existence to you. If you 
want my experience to help you, say the word, and it is freely at your service. 
I can come and stay with you at Gleninch any time after the fourth of next 
month."
With those abominable lines the readings from the letters of the women came to 
an end. The first and longest of the Extracts produced the most vivid impression 
in Court. Evidently the writer was in this case a worthy and sensible person. It 
was generally felt, however, that all three of the letters, no matter how widely 
they might differ in tone, justified the same conclusion. The wife's position at 
Gleninch (if the wife's account of it were to be trusted) was the position of a 
neglected and an unhappy woman.
The correspondence of the prisoner, which had been found, with his Diary, in the 
locked bed-table drawer, was produced next. The letters in this case were with 
one exception all written by men. Though the tone of them was moderation itself 
as compared with the second and third of the women's letters, the conclusion 
still pointed the same way. The life of the husband at Gleninch appeared to be 
just as intolerable as the life of the wife.
For example, one of the prisoner's male friends wrote inviting him to make a 
yacht voyage around the world. Another suggested an absence of six months on the 
Continent. A third recommended field-sports and fishing. The one object aimed at 
by all the writers was plainly to counsel a separation, more or less plausible 
and more or less complete, between the married pair.
The last letter read was addressed to the prisoner in a woman's handwriting, and 
was signed by a woman's Christian name only.
"Ah, my poor Eustace, what a cruel destiny is ours!" the letter began. "When I 
think of your life, sacrificed to that wretched woman, my heart bleeds for you. 
If we had been man and wife--if it had been my unutterable happiness to love and 
cherish the best, the dearest of men--what a paradise of our own we might have 
lived in! what delicious hours we might have known! But regret is vain; we are 
separated in this life--separated by ties which we both mourn, and yet which we 
must both respect. My Eustace, there is a world beyond this. There our souls 
will fly to meet each other, and mingle in one long heavenly embrace--in a 
rapture forbidden to us on earth. The misery described in your letter--oh, why, 
why did you marry her?--has wrung this confession of feeling from me. Let it 
comfort you, but let no other eyes see it. Burn my rashly written lines, and 
look (as I look) to the better life which you may yet share with your own
HELENA."



The reading of this outrageous letter provoked a question from the Bench. One of 
the Judges asked if the writer had attached any date or address to her letter.
In answer to this the Lord Advocate stated that neither the one nor the other 
appeared. The envelope showed that the letter had been posted in London. "We 
propose," the learned counsel continued, "to read certain passages from the 
prisoner's Diary, in which the name signed at the end of the letter occurs more 
than once; and we may possibly find other means of identifying the writer, to 
the satisfaction of your lordships, before the Trial is over."
The promised passages from my husband's private Diary were now read. The first 
extract related to a period of nearly a year before the date of Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan's death. It was expressed in these terms:
"News, by this morning's post, which has quite overwhelmed me. Helena's husband 
died suddenly two days since of heart-disease. She is free--my beloved Helena is 
free! And I?
"I am fettered to a woman with whom I have not a single feeling in common. 
Helena is lost to me, by my own act. Ah! I can understand now, as I never 
understood before, how irresistible temptation can be, and how easily sometimes 
crime may follow it. I had better shut up these leaves for the night. It maddens 
me to no purpose to think of my position or to write of it."
The next passage, dated a few days later, dwelt on the same subject.
"Of all the follies that a man can commit, the greatest is acting on impulse. I 
acted on impulse when I married the unfortunate creature who is now my wife.
"Helena was then lost to me, as I too hastily supposed. She had married the man 
to whom she rashly engaged herself before she met with me. He was younger than 
I, and, to all appearance, heartier and stronger than I. So far as I could see, 
my fate was sealed for life. Helena had written her farewell letter, taking 
leave of me in this world for good. My prospects were closed; my hopes had 
ended. I had not an aspiration left; I had no necessity to stimulate me to take 
refuge in work. A chivalrous action, an exertion of noble self-denial, seemed to 
be all that was left to me, all that I was fit for.
"The circumstances of the moment adapted themselves, with a fatal facility, to 
this idea. The ill-fated woman who had become attached to me (Heaven 
knows--without so much as the shadow of encouragement on my part!) had, just at 
that time, rashly placed her reputation at the mercy of the world. It rested 
with me to silence the scandalous tongues that reviled her. With Helena lost to 
me, happiness was not to be expected. All women were equally indifferent to me. 
A generous action would be the salvation of this woman. Why not perform it? I 
married her on that impulse--married her just as I might have jumped into the 
water and saved her if she had been drowning; just as I might have knocked a man 
down if I had seen him ill-treating her in the street!
"And now the woman for whom I have made this sacrifice stands between me and my 
Helena--my Helena, free to pour out all the treasures of her love on the man who 
adores the earth that she touches with her foot!
"Fool! madman! Why don't I dash out my brains against the wall that I see 
opposite to me while I write these lines?
"My gun is there in the corner. I have only to tie a string to the trigger and 
to put the muzzle to my mouth--No! My mother is alive; my mother's love is 
sacred. I have no right to take the life which she gave me. I must suffer and 
submit. Oh, Helena! Helena!"
The third extract--one among many similar passages--had been written about two 
months before the death of the prisoner's wife.
"More reproaches addressed to me! There never was such a woman for complaining; 
she lives in a perfect atmosphere of ill-temper and discontent.
"My new offenses are two in number: I never ask her to play to me now; and when 
she puts on a new dress expressly to please me, I never notice it. Notice it! 
Good Heavens! The effort of my life is not to notice her in anything she does or 
says. How could I keep my temper, unless I kept as much as possible out of the 
way of private interviews with her? And I do keep my temper. I am never hard on 
her; I never use harsh language to her. She has a double claim on my 
forbearance---she is a woman, and the law has made her my wife. I remember this; 
but I am human. The less I see of her--except when visitors are present--the 
more certain I can feel of preserving my self-control.
"I wonder what it is that makes her so utterly distasteful to me? She is a plain 
woman; but I have seen uglier women than she whose caresses I could have endured 
without the sense of shrinking that comes over me when I am obliged to submit to 
her caresses. I keep the feeling hidden from her. She loves me, poor thing--and 
I pity her. I wish I could do more; I wish I could return in the smallest degree 
the feeling with which she regards me. But no--I can only pity her. If she would 
be content to live on friendly terms with me, and never to exact demonstrations 
of tenderness, we might get on pretty well. But she wants love. Unfortunate 
creature, she wants love!
"Oh, my Helena! I have no love to give her. My heart is yours.
"I dreamed last night that this unhappy wife of mine was dead. The dream was so 
vivid that I actually got out of my bed and opened the door of her room and 
listened.
"Her calm, regular breathing was distinctly audible in the stillness of the 
night. She was in a deep sleep: I closed the door again and lighted my candle 
and read. Helena was in all my thoughts; it was hard work to fix my attention on 
the book. But anything was better than going to bed again, and dreaming perhaps 
for the second time that I too was free.
"What a life mine is! what a life my wife's is! If the house were to take fire, 
I wonder whether I should make an effort to save myself or to save her?"
The last two passages read referred to later dates still.
"A gleam of brightness has shone over this dismal existence of mine at last.
"Helena is no longer condemned to the seclusion of widowhood. Time enough has 
passed to permit of her mixing again in society. She is paying visits to friends 
in our part of Scotland; and, as she and I are cousins, it is universally 
understood that she cannot leave the North without also spending a few days at 
my house. She writes me word that the visit, however embarrassing it may be to 
us privately, is nevertheless a visit that must be made for the sake of 
appearances. Blessings on appearances! I shall see this angel in my 
purgatory--and all because Society in Mid-Lothian would think it strange that my 
cousin should be visiting in my part of Scotland and not visit Me!
"But we are to be very careful. Helena says, in so many words, 'I come to see 
you, Eustace, as a sister. You must receive me as a brother, or not receive me 
at all. I shall write to your wife to propose the day for my visit. I shall not 
forget--do you not forget--that it is by your wife's permission that I enter 
your house.'
"Only let me see her! I will submit to anything to obtain the unutterable 
happiness of seeing her!"
The last extract followed, and consisted of these lines only:
"A new misfortune! My wife has fallen ill. She has taken to her bed with a bad 
rheumatic cold, just at the time appointed for Helena's visit to Gleninch. But 
on this occasion (I gladly own it!) she has behaved charmingly. She has written 
to Helena to say that her illness is not serious enough to render a change 
necessary in the arrangements, and to make it her particular request that my 
cousin's visit shall take place upon the day originally decided on.
"This is a great sacrifice made to me on my wife's part. Jealous of every woman 
under forty who comes near me, she is, of course, jealous of Helena--and she 
controls herself, and trusts me!
"I am bound to show my gratitude for this and I will show it. From this day 
forth I vow to live more affectionately with my wife. I tenderly embraced her 
this very morning, and I hope, poor soul, she did not discover the effort that 
it cost me."
There the readings from the Diary came to an end.
The most unpleasant pages in the whole Report of the Trial were--to me--the 
pages which contained the extracts from my husband's Diary. There were 
expressions here and there which not only pained me, but which almost shook 
Eustace's position in my estimation. I think I would have given everything I 
possessed to have had the power of annihilating certain lines in the Diary. As 
for his passionate expressions of love for Mrs. Beauly, every one of them went 
through me like a sting. He had whispered words quite as warm into my ears in 
the days of his courtship. I had no reason to doubt that he truly and dearly 
loved me. But the question was, Had he just as truly and dearly loved Mrs. 
Beauly before me? Had she or I--won the first love of his heart? He had declared 
to me over and over again that he had only fancied himself to be in love before 
the day when we met. I had believed him then. I determined to believe him still. 
I did believe him. But I hated Mrs. Beauly!
As for the painful impression produced in Court by the readings from the letters 
and the Diary, it seemed to be impossible to increase it. Nevertheless it was 
perceptibly increased. In other words, it was rendered more unfavorable still 
toward the prisoner by the evidence of the next and last witness called on the 
part of the prosecution.
William Enzie, under-gardener at Gleninch, was sworn, and deposed as follows:
On the twentieth of October, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, I was sent to 
work in the shrubbery, on the side next to the garden called the Dutch Garden. 
There was a summer-house in the Dutch Garden, having its back set toward the 
shrubbery. The day was wonderfully fine and--warm for the time of year.
"Passing to my work, I passed the back of the summer-house. I heard voices 
inside--a man's voice and a lady's voice. The lady's voice was strange to me. 
The man's voice I recognized as the voice of my master. The ground in the 
shrubbery was soft, and my curiosity was excited. I stepped up to the back of 
the summer-house without being heard, and I listened to what was going on 
inside.
"The first words I could distinguish were spoken in my master's voice. He said, 
'If I could only have foreseen that you might one day be free, what a happy man 
I might have been!' The lady's voice answered, 'Hush! you must not talk so.' My 
master said upon that, 'I must talk of what is in my mind; it is always in my 
mind that I have lost you.' He stopped a bit there, and then he said on a 
sudden, 'Do me one favor, my angel! Promise me not to marry again.' The lady's 
voice spoke out thereupon sharply enough, 'What do you mean?' My master said, 'I 
wish no harm to the unhappy creature who is a burden on my life; but suppose--' 
'Suppose nothing,' the lady said; 'come back to the house.'
"She led the way into the garden, and turned round, beckoning my master to join 
her. In that position I saw her face plainly, and I knew it for the face of the 
young widow lady who was visiting at the house. She was pointed out to me by the 
head-gardener when she first arrived, for the purpose of warning me that I was 
not to interfere if I found her picking the flowers. The gardens at Gleninch 
were shown to tourists on certain days, and we made a difference, of course, in 
the matter of the flowers between strangers and guests staying in the house. I 
am quite certain of the identity of the lady who was talking with my master. 
Mrs. Beauly was a comely person--and there was no mistaking her for any other 
than herself. She and my master withdrew together on the way to the house. I 
heard nothing more of what passed between them."
This witness was severely cross-examined as to the correctness of his 
recollection of the talk in the summer-house, and as to his capacity for 
identifying both the speakers. On certain minor points he was shaken. But he 
firmly asserted his accurate remembrance of the last words exchanged between his 
master and Mrs. Beauly; and he personally described the lady in terms which 
proved that he had corruptly identified her.
With this the answer to the third question raised by the Trial--the question of 
the prisoner's motive for poisoning his wife--came to an end.
The story for the prosecution was now a story told. The staunchest friends of 
the prisoner in Court were compelled to acknowledge that the evidence thus far 
pointed clearly and conclusively against him. He seemed to feel this himself. 
When he withdrew at the close of the third day of the Trial he was so depressed 
and exhausted that he was obliged to lean on the arm of the governor of the 
jail.



CHAPTER XIX.
THE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEFENSE.



THE feeling of interest excited by the Trial was prodigiously increased on the 
fourth day. The witnesses for the defense were now to be heard, and first and 
foremost among them appeared the prisoner's mother. She looked at her son as she 
lifted her veil to take the oath. He burst into tears. At that moment the 
sympathy felt for the mother was generally extended to the unhappy son.
Examined by the Dean of Faculty, Mrs. Macallan the elder gave her answers with 
remarkable dignity and self-control.
Questioned as to certain private conversations which had passed between her late 
daughter-in-law and herself, she declared that Mrs. Eustace Macallan was 
morbidly sensitive on the subject of her personal appearance. She was devotedly 
attached to her husband; the great anxiety of her life was to make herself as 
attractive to him as possible. The imperfections in her personal appearance--and 
especially in her complexion--were subjects to her of the bitterest regret. The 
witness had heard her say, over and over again (referring to her complexion), 
that there was no risk she would not run, and no pain she would not suffer, to 
improve it. "Men" (she had said) "are all caught by outward appearances: my 
husband might love me better if I had a better color."
Being asked next if the passages from her son's Diary were to be depended on as 
evidence--that is to say, if they fairly represented the peculiarities in his 
character, and his true sentiments toward his wife--Mrs. Macallan denied it in 
the plainest and strongest terms.
"The extracts from my son's Diary are a libel on his character," she said. "And 
not the less a libel because they happen to be written by himself. Speaking from 
a mother's experience of him, I know that he must have written the passages 
produced in moments of uncontrollable depression and despair. No just person 
judges hastily of a man by the rash words which may escape him in his moody and 
miserable moments. Is my son to be so judged because he happens to have written 
his rash words, instead of speaking them? His pen has been his most deadly 
enemy, in this case--it has presented him at his very worst. He was not happy in 
his marriage--I admit that. But I say at the same time that he was invariably 
considerate toward his wife. I was implicitly trusted by both of them; I saw 
them in their most private moments. I declare--in the face of what she appears 
to have written to her friends and correspondents--that my son never gave his 
wife any just cause to assert that he treated her with cruelty or neglect."
The words, firmly and clearly spoken, produced a strong impression. The Lord 
Advocate--evidently perceiving that any attempt to weaken that impression would 
not be likely to succeed--confined himself, in cross-examination, to two 
significant questions.
"In speaking to you of the defects in her complexion," he said, "did your 
daughter-in-law refer in any way to the use of arsenic as a remedy?"
The answer to this was, "No."
The Lord Advocate proceeded:
"Did you yourself ever recommend arsenic, or mention it casually, in the course 
of the private conversations which you have described?"
The answer to this was, "Never."
The Lord Advocate resumed his seat. Mrs. Macallan the elder withdrew.
An interest of a new kind was excited by the appearance of the next witness. 
This was no less a person than Mrs. Beauly herself. The Report describes her as 
a remarkably attractive person; modest and lady-like in her manner, and, to all 
appearance, feeling sensitively the public position in which she was placed.
The first portion of her evidence was almost a recapitulation of the evidence 
given by the prisoner's mother--with this difference, that Mrs. Beauly had been 
actually questioned by the deceased lady on the subject of cosmetic applications 
to the complexion. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had complimented her on the beauty of 
her complexion, and had asked what artificial means she used to keep it in such 
good order. Using no artificial means, and knowing nothing whatever of 
cosmetics, Mrs. Beauly had resented the question, and a temporary coolness 
between the two ladies had been the result.
Interrogated as to her relations with the prisoner, Mrs. Beauly indignantly 
denied that she or Mr. Macallan had ever given the deceased lady the slightest 
cause for jealousy. It was impossible for Mrs. Beauly to leave Scotland, after 
visiting at the houses of her cousin's neighbors, without also visiting at her 
cousin's house. To take any other course would have been an act of downright 
rudeness, and would have excited remark. She did not deny that Mr. Macallan had 
admired her in the days when they were both single people. But there was no 
further expression of that feeling when she had married another man, and when he 
had married another woman. From that time their intercourse was the innocent 
intercourse of a brother and sister. Mr. Macallan was a gentleman: he knew what 
was due to his wife and to Mrs. Beauly--she would not have entered the house if 
experience had not satisfied her of that. As for the evidence of the 
under-gardener, it was little better than pure invention. The greater part of 
the conversation which he had described himself as overhearing had never taken 
place. The little that was really said (as the man reported it) was said 
jestingly; and she had checked it immediately--as the witness had himself 
confessed. For the rest, Mr. Macallan's behavior toward his wife was invariably 
kind and considerate. He was constantly devising means to alleviate her 
sufferings from the rheumatic affection which confined her to her bed; he had 
spoken of her, not once but many times, in terms of the sincerest sympathy. When 
she ordered her husband and witness to leave the room, on the day of her death, 
Mr. Macallan said to witness afterward, "We must bear with her jealousy, poor 
soul: we know that we don't deserve it." In that patient manner he submitted to 
her infirmities of temper from first to last.
The main interest in the cross-examination of Mrs. Beauly centered in a question 
which was put at the end. After reminding her that she had given her name, on 
being sworn, as "Helena Beauly," the Lord Advocate said:
"A letter addressed to the prisoner, and signed 'Helena,' has been read in 
Court. Look at it, if you please. Are you the writer of that letter?"
Before the witness could reply the Dean of Faculty protested against the 
question. The Judges allowed the protest, and refused to permit the question to 
be put. Mrs. Beauly thereupon withdrew. She had betrayed a very perceptible 
agitation on hearing the letter referred to, and on having it placed in her 
hands. This exhibition of feeling was variously interpreted among the audience. 
Upon the whole, however, Mrs. Beauly's evidence was considered to have aided the 
impression which the mother's evidence had produced in the prisoner's favor.
The next witnesses--both ladies, and both school friends of Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan--created a new feeling of interest in Court. They supplied the missing 
link in the evidence for the defense.
The first of the ladies declared that she had mentioned arsenic as a means of 
improving the complexion in conversation with Mrs. Eustace Macallan. She had 
never used it herself, but she had read of the practice of eating arsenic among 
the Styrian peasantry for the purpose of clearing the color, and of producing a 
general appearance of plumpness and good health. She positively swore that she 
had related this result of her reading to the deceased lady exactly as she now 
related it in Court.
The second witness, present at the conversation already mentioned, corroborated 
the first witness in every particular; and added that she had procured the book 
relating to the arsenic-eating practices of the Styrian peasantry, and their 
results, at Mrs. Eustace Macallan's own request. This book she had herself 
dispatched by post to Mrs. Eustace Macallan at Gleninch.
There was but one assailable point in this otherwise conclusive evidence. The 
cross-examination discovered it.
Both the ladies were asked, in turn, if Mrs. Eustace Macallan had expressed to 
them, directly or indirectly, any intention of obtaining arsenic, with a view to 
the improvement of her complexion. In each case the answer to that all-important 
question was, No. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had heard of the remedy, and had 
received the book. But of her own intentions in the future she had not said one 
word. She had begged both the ladies to consider the conversation as strictly 
private--and there it had ended.
It required no lawyer's eye to discern the fatal defect which was now revealed 
in the evidence for the defense. Every intelligent person present could see that 
the prisoner's chance of an honorable acquittal depended on tracing the poison 
to the possession of his wife--or at least on proving her expressed intention to 
obtain it. In either of these cases the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence 
would claim the support of testimony, which, however indirect it might be, no 
honest and intelligent men would be likely to resist. Was that testimony 
forthcoming? Was the counsel for the defense not at the end of his resources 
yet?
The crowded audience waited in breathless expectation for the appearance of the 
next witness. A whisper went round among certain well-instructed persons that 
the Court was now to see and hear the prisoner's old friend--already often 
referred to in the course of the Trial as "Mr. Dexter."
After a brief interval of delay there was a sudden commotion among the audience, 
accompanied by suppressed exclamations of curiosity and surprise. At the same 
moment the crier summoned the new witness by the extraordinary name of
"MISERRIMUS DEXTER"



CHAPTER XX.
THE END OF THE TRIAL.



THE calling of the new witness provoked a burst of laughter among the audience 
due partly, no doubt, to the strange name by which he had been summoned; partly, 
also, to the instinctive desire of all crowded assemblies, when their interest 
is painfully excited, to seize on any relief in the shape of the first subject 
of merriment which may present itself. A severe rebuke from the Bench restored 
order among the audience. The Lord Justice Clerk declared that he would "clear 
the Court" if the interruption to the proceedings were renewed.
During the silence which followed this announcement the new witness appeared.
Gliding, self-propelled in his chair on wheels, through the opening made for him 
among the crowd, a strange and startling creature--literally the half of a 
man--revealed himself to the general view. A coverlet which had been thrown over 
his chair had fallen off during his progress through the throng. The loss of it 
exposed to the public curiosity the head, the arms, and the trunk of a living 
human being: absolutely deprived of the lower limbs. To make this deformity all 
the more striking and all the more terrible, the victim of it was--as to his 
face and his body--an unusually handsome and an unusually well-made man. His 
long silky hair, of a bright and beautiful chestnut color, fell over shoulders 
that were the perfection of strength and grace. His face was bright with 
vivacity and intelligence. His large clear blue eyes and his long delicate white 
hands were like the eyes and hands of a beautiful woman. He would have looked 
effeminate but for the manly proportions of his throat and chest, aided in their 
effect by his flowing beard and long mustache, of a lighter chestnut shade than 
the color of his hair. Never had a magnificent head and body been more 
hopelessly ill-bestowed than in this instance! Never had Nature committed a more 
careless or a more cruel mistake than in the making of this man!
He was sworn, seated, of course, in his chair. Having given his name, he bowed 
to the Judges and requested their permission to preface his evidence with a word 
of explanation.
"People generally laugh when they first hear my strange Christian name," he 
said, in a low, clear, resonant voice which penetrated to the remotest corners 
of the Court. "I may inform the good people here that many names, still common 
among us, have their significations, and that mine is one of them. 'Alexander,' 
for instance, means, in the Greek, 'a helper of men.' 'David' means, in Hebrew, 
'well-beloved.' 'Francis' means, in German, 'free.' My name, 'Miserrimus,' 
means, in Latin, 'most unhappy.' It was given to me by my father, in allusion to 
the deformity which you all see--the deformity with which it was my misfortune 
to be born. You won't laugh at 'Miserrimus' again, will you?" He turned to the 
Dean of Faculty, waiting to examine him for the defense. "Mr. Dean. I am at your 
service. I apologize for delaying, even for a moment, the proceedings of the 
Court."
He delivered his little address with perfect grace and good-humor. Examined by 
the Dean, he gave his evidence clearly, without the slightest appearance of 
hesitation or reserve.
"I was staying at Gleninch as a guest in the house at the time of Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan's death," he began. "Doctor Jerome and Mr. Gale desired to see me at a 
private interview--the prisoner being then in a state of prostration which made 
it impossible for him to attend to his duties as master of the house. At this 
interview the two doctors astonished and horrified me by declaring that Mrs. 
Eustace Macallan had died poisoned. They left it to me to communicate the 
dreadful news to her husband, and they warned me that a post-mortem examination 
must be held on the body.
"If the Fiscal had seen my old friend when I communicated the doctors' message, 
I doubt if he would have ventured to charge the prisoner with the murder of his 
wife. To my mind the charge was nothing less than an outrage. I resisted the 
seizure of the prisoner's Diary and letters, animated by that feeling. Now that 
the Diary has been produced, I agree with the prisoner's mother in denying that 
it is fair evidence to bring against him. A Diary (when it extends beyond a bare 
record of facts and dates) is nothing but an expression of the poorest and 
weakest side in the character of the person who keeps it. It is, in nine cases 
out of ten, the more or less contemptible outpouring of vanity and conceit which 
the writer dare not exhibit to any mortal but himself. I am the prisoner's 
oldest friend. I solemnly declare that I never knew he could write downright 
nonsense until I heard his Diary read in this Court!
"He kill his wife! He treat his wife with neglect and cruelty! I venture to say, 
from twenty years' experience of him, that there is no man in this assembly who 
is constitutionally more incapable of crime and more incapable of cruelty than 
the man who stands at the Bar. While I am about it, I go further still. I even 
doubt whether a man capable of crime and capable of cruelty could have found it 
in his heart to do evil to the woman whose untimely death is the subject of this 
inquiry.
"I have heard what the ignorant and prejudiced nurse, Christina Ormsay, has said 
of the deceased lady. From my own personal observation, I contradict every word 
of it. Mrs. Eustace Macallan--granting her personal defects--was nevertheless 
one of the most charming women I ever met with. She was highly bred, in the best 
sense of the word. I never saw in any other person so sweet a smile as hers, or 
such grace and beauty of movement as hers. If you liked music, she sang 
beautifully; and few professed musicians had such a touch on the piano as hers. 
If you preferred talking, I never yet met with the man (or even the woman, which 
is saying a great deal more) whom her conversation could not charm. To say that 
such a wife as this could be first cruelly neglected, and then barbarously 
murdered, by the man--no! by the martyr--who stands there, is to tell me that 
the sun never shines at noonday, or that the heaven is not above the earth.
"Oh yes! I know that the letters of her friends show that she wrote to them in 
bitter complaint of her husband's conduct to her. But remember what one of those 
friends (the wisest and the best of them) says in reply. 'I own to thinking,' 
she writes, 'that your sensitive nature exaggerates or misinterprets the neglect 
that you experience at the hands of your husband.' There, in that one sentence, 
is the whole truth! Mrs. Eustace Macallan's nature was the imaginative, 
self-tormenting nature of a poet. No mortal love could ever have been refined 
enough for her. Trifles which women of a coarser moral fiber would have passed 
over without notice, were causes of downright agony to that exquisitely 
sensitive temperament. There are persons born to be unhappy. That poor lady was 
one of them. When I have said this, I have said all.
"No! There is one word more still to be added.
"It may be as well to remind the prosecution that Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death 
was in the pecuniary sense a serious loss to her husband. He had insisted on 
having the whole of her fortune settled on herself, and on her relatives after 
her, when he married. Her income from that fortune helped to keep in splendor 
the house and grounds at Gleninch. The prisoner's own resources (aided even by 
his mother's jointure) were quite inadequate fitly to defray the expenses of 
living at his splendid country-seat. Knowing all the circumstances, I can 
positively assert that the wife's death has deprived the husband of two-thirds 
of his income. And the prosecution, viewing him as the basest and cruelest of 
men, declares that he deliberately killed her--with all his pecuniary interests 
pointing to the preservation of her life!
"It is useless to ask me whether I noticed anything in the conduct of the 
prisoner and Mrs. Beauly which might justify a wife's jealousy. I never observed 
Mrs. Beauly with any attention, and I never encouraged the prisoner in talking 
to me about her. He was a general admirer of pretty women--so far as I know, in 
a perfectly innocent way. That he could prefer Mrs. Beauly to his wife is 
inconceivable to me, unless he were out of his senses. I never had any reason to 
believe that he was out of his senses.
"As to the question of the arsenic--I mean the question of tracing that poison 
to the possession of Mrs. Eustace Macallan--I am able to give evidence which 
may, perhaps, be worthy of the attention of the Court.
"I was present in the Fiscal's office during the examination of the papers, and 
of the other objects discovered at Gleninch. The dressing-case belonging to the 
deceased lady was shown to me after its contents had been officially 
investigated by the Fiscal himself. I happen to have a very sensitive sense of 
touch. In handling the lid of the dressing-case, on the inner side I felt 
something at a certain place which induced me to examine the whole structure of 
the lid very carefully. The result was the discovery of a private repository 
concealed in the space between the outer wood and the lining. In that repository 
I found the bottle which I now produce."
The further examination of the witness was suspended while the hidden bottle was 
compared with the bottles properly belonging to the dressing-case.
These last were of the finest cut glass, and of a very elegant form--entirely 
unlike the bottle found in the private repository, which was of the commonest 
manufacture, and of the shape ordinarily in use among chemists. Not a drop of 
liquid, not the smallest atom of any solid substance, remained in it. No smell 
exhaled from it--and, more unfortunately still for the interests of the defense, 
no label was found attached to the bottle when it had been discovered.
The chemist who had sold the second supply of arsenic to the prisoner was 
recalled and examined. He declared that the bottle was exactly like the bottle 
in which he had placed the arsenic. It was, however, equally like hundreds of 
other bottles in his shop. In the absence of the label (on which he had himself 
written the word "Poison"), it was impossible for him to identify the bottle. 
The dressing-case and the deceased lady's bedroom had been vainly searched for 
the chemist's missing label--on the chance that it might have become 
accidentally detached from the mysterious empty bottle. In both instances the 
search had been without result. Morally, it was a fair conclusion that this 
might be really the bottle which had contained the poison. Legally, there was 
not the slightest proof of it.
Thus ended the last effort of the defense to trace the arsenic purchased by the 
prisoner to the possession of his wife. The book relating the practices of the 
Styrian peasantry (found in the deceased lady's room) had been produced But 
could the book prove that she had asked her husband to buy arsenic for her? The 
crumpled paper, with the grains of powder left in it, had been identified by the 
chemist, and had been declared to contain grains of arsenic. But where was the 
proof that Mrs. Eustace Macallan's hand had placed the packet in the cabinet, 
and had emptied it of its contents? No direct evidence anywhere! Nothing but 
conjecture!
The renewed examination of Miserrimus Dexter touched on matters of no general 
interest. The cross-examination resolved itself, in substance, into a mental 
trial of strength between the witness and the Lord Advocate; the struggle 
terminating (according to the general opinion) in favor of the witness. One 
question and one answer only I will repeat here. They appeared to me to be of 
serious importance to the object that I had in view in reading the Trial.
"I believe, Mr. Dexter," the Lord Advocate remarked, in his most ironical 
manner, "that you have a theory of your own, which makes the death of Mrs. 
Eustace Macallan no mystery to you?"
"I may have my own ideas on that subject, as on other subjects," the witness 
replied. "But let me ask their lordships, the Judges: Am I here to declare 
theories or to state facts?"
I made a note of that answer. Mr. Dexter's "ideas" were the ideas of a true 
friend to my husband, and of a man of far more than average ability. They might 
be of inestimable value to me in the coming time--if I could prevail on him to 
communicate them.
I may mention, while I am writing on the subject, that I added to this first 
note a second, containing an observation of my own. In alluding to Mrs. Beauly, 
while he was giving his evidence, Mr. Dexter had spoken of her so 
slightingly--so rudely, I might almost say--as to suggest he had some strong 
private reasons for disliking (perhaps for distrusting) this lady. Here, again, 
it might be of vital importance to me to see Mr. Dexter, and to clear up, if I 
could, what the dignity of the Court had passed over without notice.



The last witness had been now examined. The chair on wheels glided away with the 
half-man in it, and was lost in a distant corner of the Court. The Lord Advocate 
rose to address the Jury for the prosecution.
I do not scruple to say that I never read anything so infamous as this great 
lawyer's speech. He was not ashamed to declare, at starting, that he firmly 
believed the prisoner to be guilty. What right had he to say anything of the 
sort? Was it for him to decide? Was he the Judge and Jury both, I should like to 
know? Having begun by condemning the prisoner on his own authority, the Lord 
Advocate proceeded to pervert the most innocent actions of that unhappy man so 
as to give them as vile an aspect as possible. Thus: When Eustace kissed his 
poor wife's forehead on her death-bed, he did it to create a favorable 
impression in the minds of the doctor and the nurse! Again, when his grief under 
his bereavement completely overwhelmed him, he was triumphing in secret, and 
acting a part! If you looked into his heart, you would see there a diabolical 
hatred for his wife and an infatuated passion for Mrs. Beauly! In everything he 
had said he had lied; in everything he had done he had acted like a crafty and 
heartless wretch! So the chief counsel for the prosecution spoke of the 
prisoner, standing helpless before him at the Bar. In my husband's place, if I 
could have done nothing more, I would have thrown something at his head. As it 
was, I tore the pages which contained the speech for the prosecution out of the 
Report and trampled them under my feet--and felt all the better too for having 
done it. At the same time I feel a little ashamed of having revenged myself on 
the harmless printed leaves now.
The fifth day of the Trial opened with the speech for the defense. Ah, what a 
contrast to the infamies uttered by the Lord Advocate was the grand burst of 
eloquence by the Dean of Faculty, speaking on my husband's side!
This illustrious lawyer struck the right note at starting.
"I yield to no one," he began, "in the pity I feel for the wife. But I say, the 
martyr in this case, from first to last, is the husband. Whatever the poor woman 
may have endured, that unhappy man at the Bar has suffered, and is now 
suffering, more. If he had not been the kindest of men, the most docile and most 
devoted of husbands, he would never have occupied his present dreadful 
situation. A man of a meaner and harder nature would have felt suspicions of his 
wife's motives when she asked him to buy poison--would have seen through the 
wretchedly commonplace excuses she made for wanting it--and would have wisely 
and cruelly said, 'No.' The prisoner is not that sort of man. He is too good to 
his wife, too innocent of any evil thought toward her, or toward any one, to 
foresee the inconveniences and the dangers to which his fatal compliance may 
expose him. And what is the result? He stands there, branded as a murderer, 
because he was too high-minded and too honorable to suspect his wife."
Speaking thus of the husband, the Dean was just as eloquent and just as 
unanswerable when he came to speak of the wife.
"The Lord Advocate," he said, "has asked, with the bitter irony for which he is 
celebrated at the Scottish Bar, why we have failed entirely to prove that the 
prisoner placed the two packets of poison in the possession of his wife. I say, 
in answer, we have proved, first, that the wife was passionately attached to the 
husband; secondly, that she felt bitterly the defects in her personal 
appearance, and especially the defects in her complexion; and, thirdly, that she 
was informed of arsenic as a supposed remedy for those defects, taken 
internally. To men who know anything of human nature, there is proof enough. 
Does my learned friend actually suppose that women are in the habit of 
mentioning the secret artifices and applications by which they improve their 
personal appearance? Is it in his experience of the sex that a woman who is 
eagerly bent on making herself attractive to a man would tell that man, or tell 
anybody else who might communicate with him, that the charm by which she hoped 
to win his heart--say the charm of a pretty complexion--had been artificially 
acquired by the perilous use of a deadly poison? The bare idea of such a thing 
is absurd. Of course nobody ever heard Mrs. Eustace Macallan speak of arsenic. 
Of course nobody ever surprised her in the act of taking arsenic. It is in the 
evidence that she would not even confide her intention to try the poison to the 
friends who had told her of it as a remedy, and who had got her the book. She 
actually begged them to consider their brief conversation on the subject as 
strictly private. From first to last, poor creature, she kept her secret; just 
as she would have kept her secret if she had worn false hair, or if she had been 
indebted to the dentist for her teeth. And there you see her husband, in peril 
of his life, because a woman acted like a woman--as your wives, gentlemen of the 
Jury, would, in a similar position, act toward You."
After such glorious oratory as this (I wish I had room to quote more of it!), 
the next, and last, speech delivered at the Trial--that is to say, the Charge of 
the Judge to the Jury--is dreary reading indeed.
His lordship first told the Jury that they could not expect to have direct 
evidence of the poisoning. Such evidence hardly ever occurred in cases of 
poisoning. They must be satisfied with the best circumstantial evidence. All 
quite true, I dare say. But, having told the Jury they might accept 
circumstantial evidence, he turned back again on his own words, and warned them 
against being too ready to trust it! "You must have evidence satisfactory and 
convincing to your own minds," he said, "in which you find no conjectures--but 
only irresistible and just inferences." Who is to decide what is a just 
inference? And what is circumstantial evidence but conjecture?
After this specimen, I need give no further extracts from the summing up. The 
Jury, thoroughly bewildered no doubt, took refuge in a compromise. They occupied 
an hour in considering and debating among themselves in their own room. (A jury 
of women would not have taken a minute!) Then they returned into Court, and gave 
their timid and trimming Scotch Verdict in these words:
"Not Proven."
Some slight applause followed among the audience, which was instantly checked. 
The prisoner was dismissed from the Bar. He slowly retired, like a man in deep 
grief: his head sunk on his breast--not looking at any one, and not replying 
when his friends spoke to him. He knew, poor fellow, the slur that the Verdict 
left on him. "We don't say you are innocent of the crime charged against you; we 
only say there is not evidence enough to convict you." In that lame and impotent 
conclusion the proceedings ended at the time. And there they would have remained 
for all time--but for Me.



CHAPTER XXI.
I SEE MY WAY.



IN the gray light of the new morning I closed the Report of my husband's Trial 
for the Murder of his first Wife.
No sense of fatigue overpowered me. I had no wish, after my long hours of 
reading and thinking, to lie down and sleep. It was strange, but it was so. I 
felt as if I had slept, and had now just awakened--a new woman, with a new mind.
I could now at last understand Eustace's desertion of me. To a man of his 
refinement it would have been a martyrdom to meet his wife after she had read 
the things published of him to all the world in the Report. I felt that as he 
would have felt it. At the same time I thought he might have trusted Me to make 
amends to him for the martyrdom, and might have come back. Perhaps it might yet 
end in his coming back. In the meanwhile, and in that expectation, I pitied and 
forgave him with my whole heart.
One little matter only dwelt on my mind disagreeably, in spite of my philosophy. 
Did Eustace still secretly love Mrs. Beauly? or had I extinguished that passion 
in him? To what order of beauty did this lady belong? Were we by any chance, the 
least in the world like one another?
The window of my room looked to the east. I drew up the blind, and saw the sun 
rising grandly in a clear sky. The temptation to go out and breathe the fresh 
morning air was irresistible. I put on my hat and shawl, and took the Report of 
the Trial under my arm. The bolts of the back door were easily drawn. In another 
minute I was out in Benjamin's pretty little garden.
Composed and strengthened by the inviting solitude and the delicious air, I 
found courage enough to face the serious question that now confronted me--the 
question of the future.
I had read the Trial. I had vowed to devote my life to the sacred object of 
vindicating my husband's innocence. A solitary, defenseless woman, I stood 
pledged to myself to carry that desperate resolution through to an end. How was 
I to begin?
The bold way of beginning was surely the wise way in such a position as mine. I 
had good reasons (founded, as I have already mentioned, on the important part 
played by this witness at the Trial) for believing that the fittest person to 
advise and assist me was--Miserrimus Dexter. He might disappoint the 
expectations that I had fixed on him, or he might refuse to help me, or (like my 
uncle Starkweather) he might think I had taken leave of my senses. All these 
events were possible. Nevertheless, I held to my resolution to try the 
experiment. If he were in the land of the living, I decided that my first step 
at starting should take me to the deformed man with the strange name.
Supposing he received me, sympathized with me, understood me? What would he say? 
The nurse, in her evidence, had reported him as speaking in an off-hand manner. 
He would say, in all probability, "What do you mean to do? And how can I help 
you to do it?"
Had I answers ready if those two plain questions were put to me? Yes! if I dared 
own to any human creature what was at that very moment secretly fermenting in my 
mind. Yes! if I could confide to a stranger a suspicion roused in me by the 
Trial which I have been thus far afraid to mention even in these pages!
It must, nevertheless, be mentioned now. My suspicion led to results which are 
part of my story and part of my life.
Let me own, then, to begin with, that I closed the record of the Trial actually 
agreeing in one important particular with the opinion of my enemy and my 
husband's enemy--the Lord Advocate! He had characterized the explanation of Mrs. 
Eustace Macallan's death offered by the defense as a "clumsy subterfuge, in 
which no reasonable being could discern the smallest fragment of probability." 
Without going quite so far as this, I, too, could see no reason whatever in the 
evidence for assuming that the poor woman had taken an overdose of the poison by 
mistake. I believed that she had the arsenic secretly in her possession, and 
that she had tried, or intended to try, the use of it internally, for the 
purpose of improving her complexion. But further than this I could not advance. 
The more I thought of it, the more plainly justified the lawyers for the 
prosecution seemed to me to be in declaring that Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died 
by the hand of a poisoner--although they were entirely and certainly mistaken in 
charging my husband with the crime.
My husband being innocent, somebody else, on my own showing, must be guilty. Who 
among the persons inhabiting the house at the time had poisoned Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan? My suspicion in answering that question pointed straight to a woman. 
And the name of that woman was--Mrs. Beauly!
Yes! To that startling conclusion I had arrived. It was, to my mind, the 
inevitable result of reading the evidence.
Look back for a moment to the letter produced in court, signed "Helena," and 
addressed to Mr. Macallan. No reasonable person can doubt (though the Judges 
excused her from answering the question) that Mrs. Beauly was the writer. Very 
well. The letter offers, as I think, trustworthy evidence to show the state of 
the woman's mind when she paid her visit to Gleninch.
Writing to Mr. Macallan, at a time when she was married to another man--a man to 
whom she had engaged herself before she met with Mr. Macallan what does she say? 
She says, "When I think of your life sacrificed to that wretched woman, my heart 
bleeds for you." And, again, she says, "If it had been my unutterable happiness 
to love and cherish the best, the dearest of men, what a paradise of our own we 
might have lived in, what delicious hours we might have known!"
If this is not the language of a woman shamelessly and furiously in love with a 
man--not her husband--what is? She is so full of him that even her idea of 
another world (see the letter) is the idea of "embracing" Mr. Macallan's "soul." 
In this condition of mind and morals, the lady one day finds herself and her 
embraces free, through the death of her husband. As soon as she can decently 
visit she goes visiting; and in due course of time she becomes the guest of the 
man whom she adores. His wife is ill in her bed. The one other visitor at 
Gleninch is a cripple, who can only move in his chair on wheels. The lady has 
the house and the one beloved object in it all to herself. No obstacle stands 
between her and "the unutterable happiness of loving and cherishing the best, 
the dearest of men" but a poor, sick, ugly wife, for whom Mr. Macallan never has 
felt, and never can feel, the smallest particle of love.
Is it perfectly absurd to believe that such a woman as this, impelled by these 
motives, and surrounded by these circumstances, would be capable of committing a 
crime--if the safe opportunity offered itself?
What does her own evidence say?
She admits that she had a conversation with Mrs. Eustace Macallan, in which that 
lady questioned her on the subject of cosmetic applications to the complexion." 
Did nothing else take place at that interview? Did Mrs. Beauly make no 
discoveries (afterward turned to fatal account) of the dangerous experiment 
which her hostess was then trying to improve her ugly complexion? All we know is 
that Mrs. Beauly said nothing about it.
What does the under-gardener say?
He heard a conversation between Mr. Macallan and Mrs. Beauly, which shows that 
the possibility of Mrs. Beauly becoming Mrs. Eustace Macallan had certainly 
presented itself to that lady's mind, and was certainly considered by her to be 
too dangerous a topic of discourse to be pursued. Innocent Mr. Macallan would 
have gone on talking. Mrs. Beauly is discreet and stops him.
And what does the nurse (Christina Ormsay) tell us?
On the day of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death, the nurse is dismissed from 
attendance, and is sent downstairs. She leaves the sick woman, recovered from 
her first attack of illness, and able to amuse herself with writing. The nurse 
remains away for half an hour, and then gets uneasy at not hearing the invalid's 
bell. She goes to the Morning-Room to consult Mr. Macallan, and there she hears 
that Mrs. Beauly is missing. Mr. Macallan doesn't know where she is, and asks 
Mr. Dexter if he has seen her. Mr. Dexter had not set eyes on her. At what time 
does the disappearance of Mrs. Beauly take place? At the very time when 
Christina Ormsay had left Mrs. Eustace Macallan alone in her room!
Meanwhile the bell rings at last--rings violently. The nurse goes back to the 
sick-room at five minutes to eleven, or thereabouts, and finds that the bad 
symptoms of the morning have returned in a gravely aggravated form. A second 
dose of poison--larger than the dose administered in the early morning--has been 
given during the absence of the nurse, and (observe) during the disappearance 
also of Mrs. Beauly. The nurse looking out into the corridor for help, 
encounters Mrs. Beauly herself, innocently on her way from her own room--just 
up, we are to suppose, at eleven in the morning!--to inquire after the sick 
woman.
A little later Mrs. Beauly accompanies Mr. Macallan to visit the invalid. The 
dying woman casts a strange look at both of them, and tells them to leave her. 
Mr. Macallan understands this as the fretful outbreak of a person in pain, and 
waits in the room to tell the nurse that the doctor is sent for. What does Mrs. 
Beauly do?
She runs out panic-stricken the instant Mrs. Eustace Macallan looks at her. Even 
Mrs. Beauly, it seems, has a conscience!
Is there nothing to justify suspicion in such circumstances as 
these--circumstances sworn to on the oaths of the witnesses?
To me the conclusion is plain. Mrs. Beauly's hand gave that second dose of 
poison. Admit this; and the inference follows that she also gave the first dose 
in the early morning. How could she do it? Look again at the evidence. The nurse 
admits that she was asleep from past two in the morning to six. She also speaks 
of a locked door of communication with the sickroom, the key of which had been 
removed, nobody knew by whom. Some person must have stolen that key. Why not 
Mrs. Beauly?
One word more, and all that I had in my mind at that time will be honestly 
revealed.
Miserrimus Dexter, under cross-examination, had indirectly admitted that he had 
ideas of his own on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. At the same 
time he had spoken of Mrs. Beauly in a tone which plainly betrayed that he was 
no friend to that lady. Did he suspect her too? My chief motive in deciding to 
ask his advice before I applied to any one else was to find an opportunity of 
putting that question to him. If he really thought of her as I did, my course 
was clear before me. The next step to take would be carefully to conceal my 
identity--and then to present myself, in the character of a harmless stranger, 
to Mrs. Beauly.
There were difficulties, of course, in my way. The first and greatest difficulty 
was to obtain an introduction to Miserrimus Dexter.
The composing influence of the fresh air in the garden had by this time made me 
readier to lie down and rest than to occupy my mind in reflecting on my 
difficulties. Little by little I grew too drowsy to think--then too lazy to go 
on walking. My bed looked wonderfully inviting as I passed by the open window of 
my room.
In five minutes more I had accepted the invitation of the bed, and had said 
farewell to my anxieties and my troubles. In five minutes more I was fast 
asleep.
A discreetly gentle knock at my door was the first sound that aroused me. I 
heard the voice of my good old Benjamin speaking outside.
"My dear! I am afraid you will be starved if I let you sleep any longer. It is 
half-past one o'clock; and a friend of yours has come to lunch with us."
A friend of mine? What friends had I? My husband was far away; and my uncle 
Starkweather had given me up in despair.
"Who is it?" I cried out from my bed, through the door.
"Major Fitz-David," Benjamin answered, by the same medium.
I sprang out of bed. The very man I wanted was waiting to see me! Major 
Fitz-David, as the phrase is, knew everybody. Intimate with my husband, he would 
certainly know my husband's old friend--Miserrimus Dexter.
Shall I confess that I took particular pains with my toilet, and that I kept the 
luncheon waiting? The woman doesn't live who would have done otherwise--when she 
had a particular favor to ask of Major Fitz-David.



CHAPTER XXII.
THE MAJOR MAKES DIFFICULTIES.



As I opened the dining-room door the Major hastened to meet me. He looked the 
brightest and the youngest of living elderly gentlemen, with his smart blue 
frock-coat, his winning smile, his ruby ring, and his ready compliment. It was 
quite cheering to meet the modern Don Juan once more.
"I don't ask after your health," said the old gentleman; "your eyes answer me, 
my dear lady, before I can put the question. At your age a long sleep is the 
true beauty-draught. Plenty of bed--there is the simple secret of keeping your 
good looks and living a long life--plenty of bed!"
"I have not been so long in my bed, Major, as you suppose. To tell the truth, I 
have been up all night, reading."
Major Fitz-David lifted his well-painted eyebrows in polite surprise.
"What is the happy book which has interested you so deeply?" he asked.
"The book," I answered, "is the Trial of my husband for the murder of his first 
wife."
"Don't mention that horrid book!" he exclaimed. "Don't speak of that dreadful 
subject! What have beauty and grace to do with Trials, Poisonings, Horrors? Why, 
my charming friend, profane your lips by talking of such things? Why frighten 
away the Loves and the Graces that lie hid in your smile. Humor an old fellow 
who adores the Loves and the Graces, and who asks nothing better than to sun 
himself in your smiles. Luncheon is ready. Let us be cheerful. Let us laugh and 
lunch."
He led me to the table, and filled my plate and my glass with the air of a man 
who considered himself to be engaged in one of the most important occupations of 
his life. Benjamin kept the conversation going in the interval.
"Major Fitz-David brings you some news, my dear," he said. "Your mother-in-law, 
Mrs. Macallan, is coming here to see you to-day."
My mother-in-law coming to see me! I turned eagerly to the Major for further 
information.
"Has Mrs. Macallan heard anything of my husband?" I asked. "Is she coming here 
to tell me about him?"
"She has heard from him, I believe," said the Major, "and she has also heard 
from your uncle the vicar. Our excellent Starkweather has written to her--to 
what purpose I have not been informed. I only know that on receipt of his letter 
she has decided on paying you a visit. I met the old lady last night at a party, 
and I tried hard to discover whether she were coming to you as your friend or 
your enemy. My powers of persuasion were completely thrown away on her. The fact 
is," said the Major, speaking in the character of a youth of five-and-twenty 
making a modest confession, "I don't get on well with old women. Take the will 
for the deed, my sweet friend. I have tried to be of some use to you and have 
failed."
Those words offered me the opportunity for which I was waiting. I determined not 
to lose it.
"You can be of the greatest use to me," I said, "if you will allow me to 
presume, Major, on your past kindness. I want to ask you a question; and I may 
have a favor to beg when you have answered me."
Major Fitz-David set down his wine-glass on its way to his lips, and looked at 
me with an appearance of breathless interest.
"Command me, my dear lady--I am yours and yours only," said the gallant old 
gentleman. "What do you wish to ask me?"
"I wish to ask if you know Miserrimus Dexter."
"Good Heavens!" cried the Major; "that is an unexpected question! Know 
Miserrimus Dexter? I have known him for more years than I like to reckon up. 
What can be your object--"
"I can tell you what my object is in two words," I interposed. "I want you to 
give me an introduction to Miserrimus Dexter."
My impression is that the Major turned pale under his paint. This, at any rate, 
is certain--his sparkling little gray eyes looked at me in undisguised 
bewilderment and alarm.
"You want to know Miserrimus Dexter?" he repeated, with the air of a man who 
doubted the evidence of his own senses. "Mr. Benjamin, have I taken too much of 
your excellent wine? Am I the victim of a delusion--or did our fair friend 
really ask me to give her an introduction to Miserrimus Dexter?"
Benjamin looked at me in some bewilderment on his side, and answered, quite 
seriously,
"I think you said so, my dear."
"I certainly said so," I rejoined. "What is there so very surprising in my 
request?"
"The man is mad!" cried the Major. "In all England you could not have picked out 
a person more essentially unfit to be introduced to a lady--to a young lady 
especially--than Dexter. Have you heard of his horrible deformity?"
"I have heard of it--and it doesn't daunt me."
"Doesn't daunt you? My dear lady, the man's mind is as deformed as his body. 
What Voltaire said satirically of the character of his countrymen in general is 
literally true of Miserrimus Dexter. He is a mixture of the tiger and the 
monkey. At one moment he would frighten you, and at the next he would set you 
screaming with laughter. I don't deny that he is clever in some 
respects--brilliantly clever, I admit. And I don't say that he has ever 
committed any acts of violence, or ever willingly injured anybody. But, for all 
that, he is mad, if ever a man were mad yet. Forgive me if the inquiry is 
impertinent. What can your motive possibly be for wanting an introduction to 
Miserrimus Dexter?"
"I want to consult him?"
"May I ask on what subject?"
"On the subject of my husband's Trial."
Major Fitz-David groaned, and sought a momentary consolation in his friend 
Benjamin's claret.
"That dreadful subject again!" he exclaimed. "Mr. Benjamin, why does she persist 
in dwelling on that dreadful subject?"
"I must dwell on what is now the one employment and the one hope of my life," I 
said. "I have reason to hope that Miserrimus Dexter can help me to clear my 
husband's character of the stain which the Scotch Verdict has left on it. Tiger 
and monkey as he may be, I am ready to run the risk of being introduced to him. 
And I ask you again--rashly and obstinately as I fear you will think--to give me 
the introduction. It will put you to no inconvenience. I won't trouble you to 
escort me; a letter to Mr. Dexter will do."
The Major looked piteously at Benjamin, and shook his head. Benjamin looked 
piteously at the Major, and shook his head.
"She appears to insist on it," said the Major.
"Yes," said Benjamin. "She appears to insist on it."
"I won't take the responsibility, Mr. Benjamin, of sending her alone to 
Miserrimus Dexter."
"Shall I go with her, sir?"
The Major reflected. Benjamin, in the capacity of protector, did not appear to 
inspire our military friend with confidence. After a moment's consideration a 
new idea seemed to strike him. He turned to me.
"My charming friend," he said, "be more charming than ever--consent to a 
compromise. Let us treat this difficulty about Dexter from a social point of 
view. What do you say to a little dinner?"
"A little dinner?" I repeated, not in the least understanding him.
"A little dinner," the Major reiterated, "at my house. You insist on my 
introducing you to Dexter, and I refuse to trust you alone with that 
crack-brained personage. The only alternative under the circumstances is to 
invite him to meet you, and to let you form your own opinion of him--under the 
protection of my roof. Who shall we have to meet you besides?" pursued the 
Major, brightening with hospitable intentions. "We want a perfect galaxy of 
beauty around the table, as a species of compensation when we have got 
Miserrimus Dexter as one the guests. Madame Mirliflore is still in London. You 
would be sure to like her--she is charming; she possesses your firmness, your 
extraordinary tenacity of purpose. Yes, we will have Madame Mirliflore. Who 
else? Shall we say Lady Clarinda? Another charming person, Mr. Benjamin! You 
would be sure to admire her--she is so sympathetic, she resembles in so many 
respects our fair friend here. Yes, Lady Clarinda shall be one of us; and you 
shall sit next to her, Mr. Benjamin, as a proof of my sincere regard for you. 
Shall we have my young prima donna to sing to us in the evening? think so. She 
is pretty; she will assist in obscuring the deformity of Dexter. Very well; 
there is our party complete! I will shut myself up this evening and approach the 
question of dinner with my cook. Shall we say this day week," asked the Major, 
taking out his pocketbook, "at eight o'clock?"
I consented to the proposed compromise--but not very willingly. With a letter of 
introduction, I might have seen Miserrimus Dexter that afternoon. As it was, the 
"little dinner" compelled me to wait in absolute inaction through a whole week. 
However, there was no help for it but to submit. Major Fitz-David, in his polite 
way, could be as obstinate as I was. He had evidently made up his mind; and 
further opposition on my part would be of no service to me.
"Punctually at eight, Mr. Benjamin," reiterated the Major. "Put it down in your 
book."
Benjamin obeyed--with a side look at me, which I was at no loss to interpret. My 
good old friend did not relish meeting a man at dinner who was described as 
"half tiger, half monkey;" and the privilege of sitting next to Lady Clarinda 
rather daunted than delighted him. It was all my doing, and he too had no choice 
but to submit. "Punctually at eight, sir," said poor old Benjamin, obediently 
recording his formidable engagement. "Please to take another glass of wine."
The Major looked at his watch, and rose--with fluent apologies for abruptly 
leaving the table.
"It is later than I thought," he said. "I have an appointment with a friend--a 
female friend; a most attractive person. You a little remind me of her, my dear 
lady--you resemble her in complexion: the same creamy paleness. I adore creamy 
paleness. As I was saying, I have an appointment with my friend; she does me the 
honor to ask my opinion on some very remarkable specimens of old lace. I have 
studied old lace. I study everything that can make me useful or agreeable to 
your enchanting sex. You won't forget our little dinner? I will send Dexter his 
invitation the moment I get home. "He took my hand and looked at it critically, 
with his head a little on one side. "A delicious hand," he said; "you don't mind 
my looking at it--you don't mind my kissing it, do you? A delicious hand is one 
of my weaknesses. Forgive my weaknesses. I promise to repent and amend one of 
these days."
"At your age, Major, do you think you have much time to lose?" asked a strange 
voice, speaking behind us.
We all three looked around toward the door. There stood my husband's mother, 
smiling satirically, with Benjamin's shy little maid-servant waiting to announce 
her.
Major Fitz-David was ready with his answer.
The old soldier was not easily taken by surprise.
"Age, my dear Mrs. Macallan, is a purely relative expression," he said. "There 
are some people who are never young, and there are other people who are never 
old. I am one of the other people. Au revoir!"
With that answer the incorrigible Major kissed the tips of his fingers to us and 
walked out. Benjamin, bowing with his old-fashioned courtesy, threw open the 
door of his little library, and, inviting Mrs. Macallan and myself to pass in, 
left us together in the room.



CHAPTER XXIII
MY MOTHER-IN-LAW SURPRISES ME.



I TOOK a chair at a respectful distance from the sofa on which Mrs. Macallan 
seated herself. The old lady smiled, and beckoned to me to take my place by her 
side. Judging by appearances, she had certainly not come to see me in the 
character of an enemy. It remained to be discovered I whether she were really 
disposed to be my friend.
"I have received a letter from your uncle the vicar," she began. "He asks me to 
visit you, and I am happy--for reasons which you shall presently hear--to comply 
with his request. Under other circumstances I doubt very much, my dear 
child--strange as the confession may appear--whether I should have ventured into 
your presence. My son has behaved to you so weakly, and (in my opinion) so 
inexcusably, that I am really, speaking as his mother, almost ashamed to face 
you."
Was she in earnest? I listened to her and looked at her in amazement.
"Your uncle's letter," pursued Mrs. Macallan, "tells me how you have behaved 
under your hard trial, and what you propose to do now Eustace has left you. 
Doctor Starkweather, poor man, seems to be inexpressibly shocked by what you 
said to him when he was in London. He begs me to use my influence to induce you 
to abandon your present ideas, and to make you return to your old home at the 
Vicarage. I don't in the least agree with your uncle, my dear. Wild as I believe 
your plans to be--you have not the slightest chance of succeeding in carrying 
them out--I admire your courage, your fidelity, your unshaken faith in my 
unhappy son, after his unpardonable behavior to you. You are a fine creature, 
Valeria, and I have come here to tell you so in plain words. Give me a kiss, 
child. You deserve to be the wife of a hero, and you have married one of the 
weakest of living mortals. God forgive me for speaking so of my own son; but 
it's in my mind, and it must come out!"
This way of speaking of Eustace was more than I could suffer, even from his 
mother. I recovered the use of my tongue in my husband's defense.
"I am sincerely proud of your good opinion, dear Mrs. Macallan," I said. "But 
you distress me--forgive me if I own it plainly--when I hear you speak so 
disparagingly of Eustace. I cannot agree with you that my husband is the weakest 
of living mortals."
"Of course not!" retorted the old lady. "You are like all good women--you make a 
hero of the man you love,--whether he deserve it or not. Your husband has hosts 
of good qualities, child--and perhaps I know them better than you do. But his 
whole conduct, from the moment when he first entered your uncle's house to the 
present time, has been, I say again, the conduct of an essentially weak man. 
What do you think he has done now by way of climax? He has joined a charitable 
brotherhood; and he is off to the war in Spain with a red cross on his arm, when 
he ought to be here on his knees, asking his wife to forgive him. I say that is 
the conduct of a weak man. Some people might call it by a harder name."
This news startled and distressed me. I might be resigned to his leaving me for 
a time; but all my instincts as a woman revolted at his placing himself in a 
position of danger during his separation from his wife. He had now deliberately 
added to my anxieties. I thought it cruel of him--but I would not confess what I 
thought to his mother. I affected to be as cool as she was; and I disputed her 
conclusions with all the firmness that I could summon to help me. The terrible 
old woman only went on abusing him more vehemently than ever.
"What I complain of in my son," proceeded Mrs. Macallan, "is that he has 
entirely failed to understand you. If he had married a fool, his conduct would 
be intelligible enough. He would have done wisely to conceal from a fool that he 
had been married already, and that he had suffered the horrid public exposure of 
a Trial for the murder of his wife. Then, again, he would have been quite right, 
when this same fool had discovered the truth, to take himself out of her way 
before she could suspect him of poisoning her--for the sake of the peace and 
quiet of both parties. But you are not a fool. I can see that, after only a 
short experience of you. Why can't he see it too? Why didn't he trust you with 
his secret from the first, instead of stealing his way into your affections 
under an assumed name? Why did he plan (as he confessed to me) to take you away 
to the Mediterranean, and to keep you abroad, for fear of some officious friends 
at home betraying him to you as the prisoner of the famous Trial? What is the 
plain answer to all these questions? What is the one possible explanation of 
this otherwise unaccountable conduct? There is only one answer, and one 
explanation. My poor, wretched son--he takes after his father; he isn't the 
least like me!--is weak: weak in his way of judging, weak in his way of acting, 
and, like all weak people, headstrong and unreasonable to the last degree. There 
is the truth! Don't get red and angry. I am as fond of him as you are. I can see 
his merits too. And one of them is that he has married a woman of spirit and 
resolution--so faithful and so fond of him that she won't even let his own 
mother tell her of his faults. Good child! I like you for hating me!"
"Dear madam, don't say that I hate you!" I exclaimed (feeling very much as if I 
did hate her, though, for all that). "I only presume to think that you are 
confusing a delicate-minded man with a weak-minded man. Our dear unhappy 
Eustace--"
"Is a delicate-minded man," said the impenetrable Mrs. Macallan, finishing my 
sentence for me. "We will leave it there, my dear, and get on to another 
subject. I wonder whether we shall disagree about that too?"
"What is the subject, madam?"
"I won't tell you if you call me madam. Call me mother. Say, 'What is the 
subject, mother?'"
"What is the subject, mother?"
"Your notion of turning yourself into a Court of Appeal for a new Trial of 
Eustace, and forcing the world to pronounce a just verdict on him. Do you really 
mean to try it?"
"I do!"
Mrs. Macallan considered for a moment grimly with herself.
"You know how heartily I admire your courage, and your devotion to my 
unfortunate son," she said. "You know by this time that I don't cant. But I 
cannot see you attempt to perform impossibilities; I cannot let you uselessly 
risk your reputation and your happiness without warning you before it is too 
late. My child, the thing you have got it in your head to do is not to be done 
by you or by anybody. Give it up."
"I am deeply obliged to you, Mrs. Macallan--"
"'Mother!'"
"I am deeply obliged to you, mother, for the interest that you take in me, but I 
cannot give it up. Right or wrong, risk or no risk, I must and I will try it!"
Mrs. Macallan looked at me very attentively, and sighed to herself.
"Oh, youth, youth!" she said to herself, sadly. "What a grand thing it is to be 
young!" She controlled the rising regret, and turned on me suddenly, almost 
fiercely, with these words: "What, in God's name, do you mean to do?"
At the instant when she put the question, the idea crossed my mind that Mrs. 
Macallan could introduce me, if she pleased, to Miserrimus Dexter. She must know 
him, and know him well, as a guest at Gleninch and an old friend of her son.
"I mean to consult Miserrimus Dexter," I answered, boldly.
Mrs. Macallan started back from me with a loud exclamation of surprise.
"Are you out of your senses?" she asked.
I told her, as I had told Major Fitz-David, that I had reason to think Mr. 
Dexter's advice might be of real assistance to me at starting.
"And I," rejoined Mrs. Macallan, "have reason to think that your whole project 
is a mad one, and that in asking Dexter's advice on it you appropriately consult 
a madman. You needn't start, child! There is no harm in the creature. I don't 
mean that he will attack you, or be rude to you. I only say that the last person 
whom a young woman, placed in your painful and delicate position, ought to 
associate herself with is Miserrimus Dexter."
Strange! Here was the Major's warning repeated by Mrs. Macallan, almost in the 
Major's own words. Well! It shared the fate of most warnings. It only made me 
more and more eager to have my own way.
"You surprise me very much," I said. "Mr. Dexter's evidence, given at the Trial, 
seems as clear and reasonable as evidence can be."
"Of course it is!" answered Mrs. Macallan. "The shorthand writers and reporters 
put his evidence into presentable language before they printed it. If you had 
heard what he really said, as I did, you would have been either very much 
disgusted with him or very much amused by him, according to your way of looking 
at things. He began, fairly enough, with a modest explanation of his absurd 
Christian name, which at once checked the merriment of the audience. But as he 
went on the mad side of him showed itself. He mixed up sense and nonsense in the 
strangest confusion; he was called to order over and over again; he was even 
threatened with fine and imprisonment for contempt of Court. In short, he was 
just like himself--a mixture of the strangest and the most opposite qualities; 
at one time perfectly clear and reasonable, as you said just now; at another 
breaking out into rhapsodies of the most outrageous kind, like a man in a state 
of delirium. A more entirely unfit person to advise anybody, I tell you again, 
never lived. You don't expect Me to introduce you to him, I hope?"
"I did think of such a thing," I answered. "But after what you have said, dear 
Mrs. Macallan, I give up the idea, of course. It is not a great sacrifice--it 
only obliges me to wait a week for Major Fitz-David's dinner-party. He has 
promised to ask Miserrimus Dexter to meet me."
"There is the Major all over!" cried the old lady. "If you pin your faith on 
that man, I pity you. He is as slippery as an eel. I suppose you asked him to 
introduce you to Dexter?"
"Yes."
"Exactly! Dexter despises him, my dear. He knows as well as I do that Dexter 
won't go to his dinner. And he takes that roundabout way of keeping you apart, 
instead of saying No to you plainly, like an honest man.
This was bad news. But I was, as usual, too obstinate to own myself defeated.
"If the worst comes to the worst," I said, "I can but write to Mr. Dexter, and 
beg him to grant me an interview."
"And go to him by yourself, if he does grant it?" inquired Mrs. Macallan.
"Certainly. By myself."
"You really mean it?"
"I do, indeed."
"I won't allow you to go by yourself."
"May I venture to ask, ma'am how you propose to prevent me?"
"By going with you, to be sure, you obstinate hussy! Yes, yes--I can be as 
headstrong as you are when I like. Mind! I don't want to know what your plans 
are. I don't want to be mixed up with your plans. My son is resigned to the 
Scotch Verdict. I am resigned to the Scotch Verdict. It is you who won't let 
matters rest as they are. You are a vain and foolhardy young person. But, 
somehow, I have taken a liking to you, and I won't let you go to Miserrimus 
Dexter by yourself. Put on your bonnet!"
"Now?" I asked.
"Certainly! My carriage is at the door. And the sooner it's over the better I 
shall be pleased. Get ready--and be quick about it!"
I required no second bidding. In ten minutes more we were on our way to 
Miserrimus Dexter.
Such was the result of my mother-in-law's visit!



CHAPTER XXIV.
MISERRIMUS DEXTER--FIRST VIEW.



WE had dawdled over our luncheon before Mrs. Macallan arrived at Benjamin's 
cottage. The ensuing conversation between the old lady and myself (of which I 
have only presented a brief abstract) lasted until quite late in the afternoon. 
The sun was setting in heavy clouds when we got into the carriage, and the 
autumn twilight began to fall around us while we were still on the road.
The direction in which we drove took us (as well as I could judge) toward the 
great northern suburb of London.
For more than an hour the carriage threaded its way through a dingy brick 
labyrinth of streets, growing smaller and smaller and dirtier and dirtier the 
further we went. Emerging from the labyrinth, I noticed in the gathering 
darkness dreary patches of waste ground which seemed to be neither town nor 
country. Crossing these, we passed some forlorn outlying groups of houses with 
dim little scattered shops among them, looking like lost country villages 
wandering on the way to London, disfigured and smoke-dried already by their 
journey. Darker and darker and drearier and drearier the prospect drew, until 
the carriage stopped at last, and Mrs. Macallan announced, in her sharply 
satirical way, that we had reached the end of our journey. "Prince Dexter's 
Palace, my dear," she said. "What do you think of it?"
I looked around me, not knowing what to think of it, if the truth must be told.
We had got out of the carriage, and we were standing on a rough half-made 
gravel-path. Right and left of me, in the dim light, I saw the half-completed 
foundations of new houses in their first stage of existence. Boards and bricks 
were scattered about us. At places gaunt scaffolding poles rose like the 
branchless trees of the brick desert. Behind us, on the other side of the 
high-road, stretched another plot of waste ground, as yet not built on. Over the 
surface of this second desert the ghostly white figures of vagrant ducks gleamed 
at intervals in the mystic light. In front of us, at a distance of two hundred 
yards or so as well as I could calculate, rose a black mass, which gradually 
resolved itself, as my eyes became accustomed to the twilight, into a long, low, 
and ancient house, with a hedge of evergreens and a pitch-black paling in front 
of it. The footman led the way toward the paling through the boards and the 
bricks, the oyster shells and the broken crockery, that strewed the ground. And 
this was "Prince Dexter's Palace!"
There was a gate in the pitch-black paling, and a bell-handle--discovered with 
great difficulty. Pulling at the handle, the footman set in motion, to judge by 
the sound produced, a bell of prodigious size, fitter for a church than a house.
While we were waiting for admission, Mrs. Macallan pointed to the low, dark line 
of the old building.
"There is one of his madnesses," she said. "The speculators in this new 
neighborhood have offered him I don't know how many thousand pounds for the 
ground that house stands on. It was originally the manor-house of the district. 
Dexter purchased it many years since in one of his freaks of fancy. He has no 
old family associations with the place; the walls are all but tumbling about his 
ears; and the money offered would really be of use to him. But no! He refused 
the proposal of the enterprising speculators by letter in these words: 'My house 
is a standing monument of the picturesque and beautiful, amid the mean, 
dishonest, and groveling con structions of a mean, dishonest, and groveling age. 
I keep my house, gentlemen, as a useful lesson to you. Look at it while you are 
building around me, and blush, if you can, for your work.' Was there ever such 
an absurd letter written yet? Hush! I hear footsteps in the garden. Here comes 
his cousin. His cousin is a woman. I may as well tell you that, or you might 
mistake her for a man in the dark."
A rough, deep voice, which I should certainly never have supposed to be the 
voice of a woman, hailed us from the inner side of the paling.
"Who's there?"
"Mrs. Macallan," answered my mother-in-law.
"What do you want?"
"We want to see Dexter."
"You can't see him."
"Why not?"
"What did you say your name was?"
"Macallan. Mrs. Macallan. Eustace Macallan's mother. Now do you understand?"
The voice muttered and grunted behind the paling, and a key turned in the lock 
of the gate.
Admitted to the garden, in the deep shadow of the shrubs, I could see nothing 
distinctly of the woman with the rough voice, except that she wore a man's hat. 
Closing the gate behind us, without a word of welcome or explanation, she led 
the way to the house. Mrs. Macallan followed her easily, knowing the place; and 
I walked in Mrs. Macallan's footsteps as closely as I could. "This is a nice 
family," my mother-in-law whispered to me. "Dexter's cousin is the only woman in 
the house--and Dexter's cousin is an idiot."
We entered a spacious hall with a low ceiling, dimly lighted at its further end 
by one small oil-lamp. I could see that there were pictures on the grim, brown 
walls, but the subjects represented were invisible in the obscure and shadowy 
light.
Mrs. Macallan addressed herself to the speechless cousin with the man's hat.
"Now tell me," she said. "Why can't we see Dexter?"
The cousin took a sheet of paper off the table, and handed it to Mrs. Macallan.
"The Master's writing," said this strange creature, in a hoarse whisper, as if 
the bare idea of "the Master" terrified her. "Read it. And stay or go, which you 
please."
She opened an invisible side door in the wall, masked by one of the 
pictures--disappeared through it like a ghost--and left us together alone in the 
hall.
Mrs. Macallan approached the oil-lamp, and looked by its light at the sheet of 
paper which the woman had given to her. I followed and peeped over her shoulder 
without ceremony. The paper exhibited written characters, traced in a 
wonderfully large and firm handwriting. Had I caught the infection of madness in 
the air of the house? Or did I really see before me these words?



"NOTICE.--My immense imagination is at work. Visions of heroes unroll themselves 
before me. I reanimate in myself the spirits of the departed great. My brains 
are boiling in my head. Any persons who disturb me, under existing 
circumstances, will do it at the peril of their lives.--DEXTER."



Mrs. Macallan looked around at me quietly with her sardonic smile.
"Do you still persist in wanting to be introduced to him?" she asked.
The mockery in the tone of the question roused my pride. I determined that I 
would not be the first to give way.
"Not if I am putting you in peril of your life, ma'am," I answered, pertly 
enough, pointing to the paper in her hand.
My mother-in-law returned to the hall table, and put the paper back on it 
without condescending to reply. She then led the way to an arched recess on our 
right hand, beyond which I dimly discerned a broad flight of oaken stairs.
"Follow me," said Mrs. Macallan, mounting the stairs in the dark. "I know where 
to find him."
We groped our way up the stairs to the first landing. The next flight of steps, 
turning in the reverse direction, was faintly illuminated, like the hall below, 
by one oil-lamp, placed in some invisible position above us. Ascending the 
second flight of stairs and crossing a short corridor, we discovered the lamp, 
through the open door of a quaintly shaped circular room, burning on the 
mantel-piece. Its light illuminated a strip of thick tapestry, hanging loose 
from the ceiling to the floor, on the wall opposite to the door by which we had 
entered.
Mrs. Macallan drew aside the strip of tapestry, and, signing me to follow her, 
passed behind it.
"Listen!" she whispered.
Standing on the inner side of the tapestry, I found myself in a dark recess or 
passage, at the end of which a ray of light from the lamp showed me a closed 
door. I listened, and heard on the other side of the door a shouting voice, 
accompanied by an extraordinary rumbling and whistling sound, traveling backward 
and forward, as well as I could judge, over a great space. Now the rumbling and 
the whistling would reach their climax of loudness, and would overcome the 
resonant notes of the shouting voice. Then again those louder sounds gradually 
retreated into distance, and the shouting voice made itself heard as the more 
audible sound of the two. The door must have been of prodigious solidity. Listen 
as intently as I might, I failed to catch the articulate words (if any) which 
the voice was pronouncing, and I was equally at a loss to penetrate the cause 
which produced the rumbling and whistling sounds.
"What can possibly be going on," I whispered to Mrs. Macallan, "on the other 
side of that door?"
"Step softly," my mother-in-law answered, "and come and see."
She arranged the tapestry behind us so as completely to shut out the light in 
the circular room. Then noiselessly turning the handle, she opened the heavy 
door.
We kept ourselves concealed in the shadow of the recess, and looked through the 
open doorway.
I saw (or fancied I saw, in the obscurity) a long room with a low ceiling. The 
dying gleam of an ill-kept fire formed the only light by which I could judge of 
objects and distances. Redly illuminating the central portion of the room, 
opposite to which we were standing, the fire-light left the extremities shadowed 
in almost total darkness. I had barely time to notice this before I heard the 
rumbling and whistling sounds approaching me. A high chair on wheels moved by, 
through the field of red light, carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, 
and arms furiously raised and lowered working the machinery that propelled the 
chair at its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunrise of 
Austerlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me on his rumbling 
and whistling wheels, in the red glow of the fire-light. "I give the word, and 
thrones rock, and kings fall, and nations tremble, and men by tens of thousands 
fight and bleed and die!" The chair rushed out of sight, and the shouting man in 
it became another hero. "I am Nelson!" the ringing voice cried now. "I am 
leading the fleet at Trafalgar. I issue my commands, prophetically conscious of 
victory and death. I see my own apotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's 
tears, my burial in the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets 
sing my praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far end of 
the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful apparition, man and 
machinery blended in one--the new Centaur, half man, half chair--flew by me 
again in the dying light. "I am Shakespeare!" cried the frantic creature now. "I 
am writing 'Lear,' the tragedy of tragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am the poet 
who towers over them all. Light! light! the lines flow out like lava from the 
eruption of my volcanic mind. Light! light! for the poet of all time to write 
the words that live forever!" He ground and tore his way back toward the middle 
of the room. As he approached the fire-place a last morsel of unburned coal (or 
wood) burst into momentary flame, and showed the open doorway. In that moment he 
saw us! The wheel-chair stopped with a shock that shook the crazy old floor of 
the room, altered its course, and flew at us with the rush of a wild animal. We 
drew back, just in time to escape it, against the wall of the recess. The chair 
passed on, and burst aside the hanging tapestry. The light of the lamp in the 
circular room poured in through the gap. The creature in the chair checked his 
furious wheels, and looked back over his shoulder with an impish curiosity 
horrible to see.
"Have I run over them? Have I ground them to powder for presuming to intrude on 
me?" he said to himself. As the expression of this amiable doubt passed his lips 
his eyes lighted on us. His mind instantly veered back again to Shakespeare and 
King Lear. "Goneril and Regan!" he cried. "My two unnatural daughters, my 
she-devil children come to mock at me!"
"Nothing of the sort," said my mother-in-law, as quietly as if she were 
addressing a perfectly reasonable being. "I am your old friend, Mrs. Macallan; 
and I have brought Eustace Macallan's second wife to see you."
The instant she pronounced those last words, "Eustace Macallan's second wife," 
the man in the chair sprang out of it with a shrill cry of horror, as if she had 
shot him. For one moment we saw a head and body in the air, absolutely deprived 
of the lower limbs. The moment after, the terrible creature touched the floor as 
lightly as a monkey, on his hands. The grotesque horror of the scene culminated 
in his hopping away on his hands, at a prodigious speed, until he reached the 
fire-place in the long room. There he crouched over the dying embers, shuddering 
and shivering, and muttering, "Oh, pity me, pity me!" dozens and dozens of times 
to himself.
This was the man whose advice I had come to ask--who assistance I had 
confidently counted on in my hour of need.



CHAPTER XXV.
MISERRIMUS DEXTER--SECOND VIEW



THOROUGHLY disheartened and disgusted, and (if I must honestly confess it) 
thoroughly frightened too, I whispered to Mrs. Macallan, "I was wrong, and you 
were right. Let us go."
The ears of Miserrimus Dexter must have been as sensitive as the ears of a dog. 
He heard me say, "Let us go."
"No!" he called out. "Bring Eustace Macallan's second wife in here. I am a 
gentleman--I must apologize to her. I am a student of human character--I wish to 
see her."
The whole man appeared to have undergone a complete transformation. He spoke in 
the gentlest of voices, and he sighed hysterically when he had done, like a 
woman recovering from a burst of tears. Was it reviving courage or reviving 
curiosity? When Mrs. Macallan said to me, "The fit is over now; do you still 
wish to go away?" I answered, "No; I am ready to go in."
"Have you recovered your belief in him already?" asked my mother-in-law, in her 
mercilessly satirical way.
"I have recovered from my terror of him," I replied.
"I am sorry I terrified you," said the soft voice at the fire-place. "Some 
people think I am a little mad at times. You came, I suppose, at one of the 
times--if some people are right. I admit that I am a visionary. My imagination 
runs away with me, and I say and do strange things. On those occasions, anybody 
who reminds me of that horrible Trial throws me back again into the past, and 
causes me unutterable nervous suffering. I am a very tender-hearted man. As the 
necessary consequence (in such a world as this), I am a miserable wretch. Accept 
my excuses. Come in, both of you. Come in and pity me."
A child would not have been frightened of him now. A child would have gone in 
and pitied him.
The room was getting darker and darker. We could just see the crouching figure 
of Miserrimus Dexter at the expiring fire--and that was all.
"Are we to have no light?" asked Mrs. Macallan. "And is this lady to see you, 
when the light comes, out of your chair?"
He lifted something bright and metallic, hanging round his neck, and blew on it 
a series of shrill, trilling, bird-like notes. After an interval he was answered 
by a similar series of notes sounding faintly in some distant region of the 
house.
"Ariel is coming," he said. "Compose yourself, Mamma Macallan; Ariel with make 
me presentable to a lady's eyes."
He hopped away on his hands into the darkness at the end of the room. "Wait a 
little, said Mrs. Macallan, "and you will have another surprise--you will see 
the 'delicate Ariel.'"
We heard heavy footsteps in the circular room.
"Ariel!" sighed Miserrimus Dexter out of the darkness, in his softest notes.
To my astonishment the coarse, masculine voice of the cousin in the man's 
hat--the Caliban's, rather than the Ariel's voice--answered, "Here!"
"My chair, Ariel!"
The person thus strangely misnamed drew aside the tapestry, so as to let in more 
light; then entered the room, pushing the wheeled chair before her. She stooped 
and lifted Miserrimus Dexter from the floor, like a child. Before she could put 
him into the chair, he sprang out of her arms with a little gleeful cry, and 
alighted on his seat, like a bird alighting on its perch!
"The lamp," said Miserrimus Dexter, "and the looking-glass.--Pardon me," he 
added, addressing us, "for turning my back on you. You mustn't see me until my 
hair is set to rights.--Ariel! the brush, the comb, and the perfumes!"
Carrying the lamp in one hand, the looking-glass in the other, and the brush 
(with the comb stuck in it) between her teeth, Ariel the Second, otherwise 
Dexter's cousin, presented herself plainly before me for the first time. I could 
now see the girl's round, fleshy, inexpressive face, her rayless and colorless 
eyes, her coarse nose and heavy chin. A creature half alive; an imperfectly 
developed animal in shapeless form clad in a man's pilot jacket, and treading in 
a man's heavy laced boots, with nothing but an old red-flannel petticoat, and a 
broken comb in her frowzy flaxen hair, to tell us that she was a woman--such was 
the inhospitable person who had received us in the darkness when we first 
entered the house.
This wonderful valet, collecting her materials for dressing her still more 
wonderful master's hair, gave him the looking-glass (a hand-mirror), and 
addressed herself to her work.
She combed, she brushed, she oiled, she perfumed the flowing locks and the long 
silky beard of Miserrimus Dexter with the strangest mixture of dullness and 
dexterity that I ever saw. Done in brute silence, with a lumpish look and a 
clumsy gait, the work was perfectly well done nevertheless. The imp in the chair 
superintended the whole proceeding critically by means of his hand-mirror. He 
was too deeply interested in this occupation to speak until some of the 
concluding touches to his beard brought the misnamed Ariel in front of him, and 
so turned her full face toward the part of the room in which Mrs. Macallan and I 
were standing. Then he addressed us, taking especial care, however, not to turn 
his head our way while his toilet was still incomplete.
"Mamma Macallan," he said, "what is the Christian name of your son's second 
wife?"
"Why do you want to know?" asked my mother-in-law.
"I want to know because I can't address her as 'Mrs. Eustace Macallan.'"
"Why not?"
"It recalls the other Mrs. Eustace Macallan. If I am reminded of those horrible 
days at Gleninch my fortitude will give way--I shall burst out screaming again."
Hearing this, I hastened to interpose.
"My name is Valeria," I said.
"A Roman name," remarked Miserrimus Dexter. "I like it. My mind is cast in the 
Roman mold. My bodily build would have been Ro man if I had been born with legs. 
I shall call you Mrs. Valeria, unless you disapprove of it."
I hastened to say that I was far from disapproving of it.
"Very good," said Miserrimus Dexter "Mrs. Valeria, do you see the face of this 
creature in front of me?"
He pointed with the hand-mirror to his cousin as unconcernedly as he might have 
pointed to a dog. His cousin, on her side, took no more notice than a dog would 
have taken of the contemptuous phrase by which he had designated her. She went 
on combing and oiling his beard as composedly as ever.
"It is the face of an idiot, isn't it?" pursued Miserrimus Dexter! "Look at her! 
She is a mere vegetable. A cabbage in a garden has as much life and expression 
in it as that girl exhibits at the present moment. Would you believe there was 
latent intelligence, affection, pride, fidelity, in such a half-developed being 
as this?"
I was really ashamed to answer him. Quite needlessly! The impenetrable young 
woman went on with her master's beard. A machine could not have taken less 
notice of the life and the talk around it than this incomprehensible creature.
"I have got at that latent affection, pride, fidelity, and the rest of it," 
resumed Miserrimus Dexter. "I hold the key to that dormant Intelligence. Grand 
thought! Now look at her when I speak. (I named her, poor wretch, in one of my 
ironical moments. She has got to like her name, just as a dog gets to like his 
collar.) Now, Mrs. Valeria, look and listen.--Ariel!"
The girl's dull face began to brighten. The girl's mechanically moving hand 
stopped, and held the comb in suspense.
"Ariel! you have learned to dress my hair and anoint my beard, haven't you?"
Her face still brightened. "Yes! yes! yes!" she answered, eagerly. "And you say 
I have learned to do it well, don't you?"
"I say that. Would you like to let anybody else do it for you?"
Her eyes melted softly into light and life. Her strange unwomanly voice sank to 
the gentlest tones that I had heard from her yet.
"Nobody else shall do it for me," she said at once proudly and tenderly. 
"Nobody, as long as I live, shall touch you but me."
"Not even the lady there?" asked Miserrimus Dexter, pointing backward with his 
hand-mirror to the place at which I was standing.
Her eyes suddenly flashed, her hand suddenly shook the comb at me, in a burst of 
jealous rage.
"Let her try!" cried the poor creature, raising her voice again to its hoarsest 
notes. "Let her touch you if she dares!"
Dexter laughed at the childish outbreak. "That will do, my delicate Ariel," he 
said. "I dismiss your Intelligence for the present. Relapse into your former 
self. Finish my beard."
She passively resumed her work. The new light in her eyes, the new expression in 
her face, faded little by little and died out. In another minute the face was as 
vacant and as lumpish as before; the hands did their work again with the 
lifeless dexterity which had so painfully impressed me when she first took up 
the brush. Miserrimus Dexter appeared to be perfectly satisfied with these 
results.
"I thought my little experiment might interest you," he said. "You see how it 
is? The dormant intelligence of my curious cousin is like the dormant sound in a 
musical instrument. I play upon it--and it answers to my touch. She likes being 
played upon. But her great delight is to hear me tell a story. I puzzle her to 
the verge of distraction; and the more I confuse her the better she likes the 
story. It is the greatest fun; you really must see it some day." He indulged 
himself in a last look at the mirror. "Ha!" he said, complacently; "now I shall 
do. Vanish, Ariel!"
She tramped out of the room in her heavy boots, with the mute obedience of a 
trained animal. I said "Good-night" as she passed me. She neither returned the 
salutation nor looked at me: the words simply produced no effect on her dull 
senses. The one voice that could reach her was silent. She had relapsed once 
more into the vacant inanimate creature who had opened the gate to us, until it 
pleased Miserrimus Dexter to speak to her again.
"Valeria!" said my mother-in-law. "Our modest host is waiting to see what you 
think of him."
While my attention was fixed on his cousin he had wheeled his chair around so as 
to face me. with the light of the lamp falling full on him. In mentioning his 
appearance as a witness at the Trial, I find I have borrowed (without meaning to 
do so) from my experience of him at this later time. I saw plainly now the 
bright intelligent face and the large clear blue eyes, the lustrous waving hair 
of a light chestnut color, the long delicate white hands, and the magnificent 
throat and chest which I have elsewhere described. The deformity which degraded 
and destroyed the manly beauty of his head and breast was hidden from view by an 
Oriental robe of many colors, thrown over the chair like a coverlet. He was 
clothed in a jacket of black velvet, fastened loosely across his chest with 
large malachite buttons; and he wore lace ruffles at the ends of his sleeves, in 
the fashion of the last century. It may well have been due to want of perception 
on my part--but I could see nothing mad in him, nothing in any way repelling, as 
he now looked at me. The one defect that I could discover in his face was at the 
outer corners of his eyes, just under the temple. Here when he laughed, and in a 
lesser degree when he smiled, the skin contracted into quaint little wrinkles 
and folds, which looked strangely out of harmony with the almost youthful 
appearance of the rest of his face. As to his other features, the mouth, so far 
as his beard and mustache permitted me to see it, was small and delicately 
formed; the nose--perfectly shaped on the straight Grecian model--was perhaps a 
little too thin, judged by comparison with the full cheeks and the high massive 
forehead. Looking at him as a whole (and speaking of him, of course, from a 
woman's, not a physiognomist's point of view), I can only describe him as being 
an unusually handsome man. A painter would have reveled in him as a model for 
St. John. And a young girl, ignorant of what the Oriental robe hid from view, 
would have said to herself, the instant she looked at him, "Here is the hero of 
my dreams!"
His blue eyes--large as the eyes of a woman, clear as the eyes of a 
child--rested on me the moment I turned toward him, with a strangely varying 
play of expression, which at once interested and perplexed me.
Now there was doubt--uneasy, painful doubt--in the look; and now again it 
changed brightly to approval, so open and unrestrained that a vain woman might 
have fancied she had made a conquest of him at first sight. Suddenly a new 
emotion seemed to take possession of him. His eyes sank, his head drooped; he 
lifted his hands with a gesture of regret. He muttered and murmured to himself; 
pursuing some secret and melancholy train of thought, which seemed to lead him 
further and further away from present objects of interest, and to plunge him 
deeper and deeper in troubled recollections of the past. Here and there I caught 
some of the words. Little by little I found myself trying to fathom what was 
darkly passing in this strange man's mind.
"A far more charming face," I heard him say. "But no--not a more beautiful 
figure. What figure was ever more beautiful than hers? Something--but not 
all--of her enchanting grace. Where is the resemblance which has brought her 
back to me? In the pose of the figure, perhaps. In the movement of the figure, 
perhaps. Poor martyred angel! What a life! And what a death! what a death!"
Was he comparing me with the victim of the poison--with my husband's first wife? 
His words seemed to justify the conclusion. If I were right, the dead woman had 
evidently been a favorite with him. There was no misinterpreting the broken 
tones of his voice when he spoke of her: he had admired her, living; he mourned 
her, dead. Supposing that I could prevail upon myself to admit this 
extraordinary person into my confidence, what would be the result? Should I be 
the gainer or the loser by the resemblance which he fancied he had discovered? 
Would the sight of me console him or pain him? I waited eagerly to hear more on 
the subject of the first wife. Not a word more escaped his lips. A new change 
came over him. He lifted his head with a start, and looked about him as a weary 
man might look if he was suddenly disturbed in a deep sleep.
"What have I done?" he said. "Have I been letting my mind drift again?" He 
shuddered and sighed. "Oh, that house of Gleninch!" he murmured, sadly, to 
himself. "Shall I never get away from it in my thoughts? Oh, that house of 
Gleninch!"
To my infinite disappointment, Mrs. Macallan checked the further revelation of 
what was passing in his mind.
Something in the tone and manner of his allusion to her son's country-house 
seemed to have offended her. She interposed sharply and decisively.
"Gently, my friend, gently!" she said. "I don't think you quite know what you 
are talking about."
His great blue eyes flashed at her fiercely. With one turn of his hand he 
brought his chair close at her side. The next instant he caught her by the arm, 
and forced her to bend to him, until he could whisper in her ear. He was 
violently agitated. His whisper was loud enough to make itself heard where I was 
sitting at the time.
"I don't know what I am talking about?" he repeated, with his eyes fixed 
attentively, not on my mother-in-law, but on me. "You shortsighted old woman! 
where are your spectacles? Look at her! Do you see no resemblance--the figure, 
not the face!--do you see no resemblance there to Eustace's first wife?"
"Pure fancy!" rejoined Mrs. Macallan. "I see nothing of the sort."
He shook her impatiently.
"Not so loud!" he whispered. "She will hear you."
"I have heard you both," I said. "You need have no fear, Mr. Dexter, of speaking 
before me. I know that my husband had a first wife, and I know how miserably she 
died. I have read the Trial."
"You have read the life and death of a martyr!" cried Miserrimus Dexter. He 
suddenly wheeled his chair my way; he bent over me; his eyes filled with tears. 
"Nobody appreciated her at her true value," he said, "but me. Nobody but me! 
nobody but me!"
Mrs. Macallan walked away impatiently to the end of the room.
"When you are ready, Valeria, I am," she said. "We cannot keep the servants and 
the horses waiting much longer in this bleak place."
I was too deeply interested in leading Miserrimus Dexter to pursue the subject 
on which he had touched to be willing to leave him at that moment. I pretended 
not to have heard Mrs. Macallan. I laid my hand, as if by accident, on the 
wheel-chair to keep him near me.
"You showed me how highly you esteemed that poor lady in your evidence at the 
Trial," I said. "I believe, Mr. Dexter, you have ideas of your own about the 
mystery of her death?"
He had been looking at my hand, resting on the arm of his chair, until I 
ventured on my question. At that he suddenly raised his eyes, and fixed them 
with a frowning and furtive suspicion on my face.
"How do you know I have ideas of my own?" he asked, sternly.
"I know it from reading the Trial," I answered. "The lawyer who cross-examined 
you spoke almost in the very words which I have just used. I had no intention of 
offending you, Mr. Dexter."
His face cleared as rapidly as it had clouded. He smiled, and laid his hand on 
mine. His touch struck me cold. I felt every nerve in me shivering under it; I 
drew my hand away quickly.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "if I have misunderstood you. I have ideas of my 
own about that unhappy lady. "He paused and looked at me in silence very 
earnestly. "Have you any ideas?" he asked. "Ideas about her life? or about her 
death?"
I was deeply interested; I was burning to hear more. It might encourage him to 
speak if I were candid with him. I answered, "Yes."
"Ideas which you have mentioned to any one?" he went on.
"To no living creature," I replied--"as yet."
"This very strange!" he said, still earnestly reading my face. "What interest 
can you have in a dead woman whom you never knew? Why did you ask me that 
question just now? Have you any motive in coming here to see me?"
I boldly acknowledged the truth. I said, "I have a motive."
"Is it connected with Eustace Macallan's first wife?"
"It is."
"With anything that happened in her lifetime?"
"No."
"With her death?"
"Yes."
He suddenly clasped his hands with a wild gesture of despair, and then pressed 
them both on his head, as if he were struck by some sudden pain.
"I can't hear it to-night!" he said. "I would give worlds to hear it, but I 
daren't. I should lose all hold over myself in the state I am in now. I am not 
equal to raking up the horror and the mystery of the past; I have not courage 
enough to open the grave of the martyred dead. Did you hear me when you came 
here? I have an immense imagination. It runs riot at times. It makes an actor of 
me. I play the parts of all the heroes that ever lived. I feel their characters. 
I merge myself in their individualities. For the time I am the man I fancy 
myself to be. I can't help it. I am obliged to do it. If I restrained my 
imagination when the fit is on me, I should go mad. I let myself loose. It lasts 
for hours. It leaves me with my energies worn out, with my sensibilities 
frightfully acute. Rouse any melancholy or terrible associations in me at such 
times, and I am capable of hysterics, I am capable of screaming. You heard me 
scream. You shall not see me in hysterics. No, Mrs. Valeria--no, you innocent 
reflection of the dead and gone--I would not frighten you for the world. Will 
you come here to-morrow in the daytime? I have got a chaise and a pony. Ariel, 
my delicate Ariel, can drive. She shall call at Mamma Macallan's and fetch you. 
We will talk to-morrow, when I am fit for it. I am dying to hear you. I will be 
fit for you in the morning. I will be civil, intelligent, communicative, in the 
morning. No more of it now. Away with the subject--the too exciting, the too 
interesting subject! I must compose myself or my brains will explode in my head. 
Music is the true narcotic for excitable brains. My harp! my harp!"
He rushed away in his chair to the far end of the room, passing Mrs. Macallan as 
she returned to me, bent on hastening our departure.
"Come!" said the old lady, irritably. "You have seen him, and he has made a good 
show of himself. More of him might be tiresome. Come away."
The chair returned to us more slowly. Miserrimus Dexter was working it with one 
hand only. In the other he held a harp of a pattern which I had hitherto only 
seen in pictures. The strings were few in number, and the instrument was so 
small that I could have held it easily on my lap. It was the ancient harp of the 
pictured Muses and the legendary Welsh bards.
"Good-night, Dexter," said Mrs. Macallan.
He held up one hand imperatively.
"Wait!" he said. "Let her hear me sing." He turned to me. "I decline to be 
indebted to other people for my poetry and my music," he went on. "I compose my 
own poetry and my own music. I improvise. Give me a moment to think. I will 
improvise for You."
He closed his eyes and rested his head on the frame of the harp. His fingers 
gently touched the strings while he was thinking. In a few minutes he lifted his 
head, looked at me, and struck the first notes--the prelude to the song. It was 
wild, barbaric, monotonous music, utterly unlike any modern composition. 
Sometimes it suggested a slow and undulating Oriental dance. Sometimes it 
modulated into tones which reminded me of the severer harmonies of the old 
Gregorian chants. The words, when they followed the prelude, were as wild, as 
recklessly free from all restraint of critical rules, as the music. They were 
assuredly inspired by the occasion; I was the theme of the strange song. And 
thus--in one of the finest tenor voices I ever heard--my poet sang of me:



"Why does she come?
She reminds me of the lost;
She reminds me of the dead:
In her form like the other,
In her walk like the other:
Why does she come?

"Does Destiny bring her?
Shall we range together
The mazes of the past?
Shall we search together
The secrets of the past?
Shall we interchange thoughts, surmises, suspicions?
Does Destiny bring her?

"The Future will show.
Let the night pass;
Let the day come.
I shall see into Her mind:
She will look into Mine.
The Future will show."




His voice sank, his fingers touched the strings more and more feebly as he 
approached the last lines. The overwrought brain needed and took its reanimating 
repose. At the final words his eyes slowly closed. His head lay back on the 
chair. He slept with his arms around his harp, as a child sleeps hugging its 
last new toy.
We stole out of the room on tiptoe, and left Miserrimus Dexter--poet, composer, 
and madman--in his peaceful sleep.
[Chapters 26 - 50] [Title Page] 
The Law and the Lady, Chapters 26 - 50CHAPTER XXVI.
MORE OF MY OBSTINACY.



ARIEL was downstairs in the shadowy hall, half asleep, half awake, waiting to 
see the visitors clear of the house. Without speaking to us, without looking at 
us, she led the way down the dark garden walk, and locked the gate behind us. 
"Good-night, Ariel," I called out to her over the paling. Nothing answered me 
but the tramp of her heavy footsteps returning to the house, and the dull thump, 
a moment afterward, of the closing door.
The footman had thoughtfully lighted the carriage lamps. Carrying one of them to 
serve as a lantern, he lighted us over the wilds of the brick desert, and landed 
us safely on the path by the high-road.
"Well!" said my mother-in-law, when we were comfortably seated in the carriage 
again. "You have seen Miserrimus Dexter, and I hope you are satisfied. I will do 
him the justice to declare that I never, in all my experience, saw him more 
completely crazy than he was to-night. What do you say?"
"I don't presume to dispute your opinion," I answered. "But, speaking for 
myself, I'm not quite sure that he is mad."
"Not mad!" cried Mrs. Macallan, "after those frantic performances in his chair? 
Not mad, after the exhibition he made of his unfortunate cousin? Not mad, after 
the song that he sang in your honor, and the falling asleep by way of 
conclusion? Oh, Valeria! Valeria! Well said the wisdom of our ancestors--there 
are none so blind as those who won't see."
"Pardon me, dear Mrs. Macallan, I saw everything that you mention, and I never 
felt more surprised or more confounded in my life. But now I have recovered from 
my amazement, and can think it over quietly, I must still venture to doubt 
whether this strange man is really mad in the true meaning of the word. It seems 
to me that he only expresses--I admit in a very reckless and boisterous 
way--thoughts and feelings which most of us are ashamed of as weaknesses, and 
which we keep to ourselves accordingly. I confess I have often fancied myself 
transformed into some other person, and have felt a certain pleasure in seeing 
myself in my new character. One of our first amusements as children (if we have 
any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the 
characters of other personages as a change--to fairies, to be queens, to be 
anything, in short, but what we really are. Mr. Dexter lets out the secret just 
as the children do, and if that is madness, he is certainly mad. But I noticed 
that when his imagination cooled down he became Miserrimus Dexter again--he no 
more believed himself than we believed him to be Napoleon or Shakespeare. 
Besides, some allowance is surely to be made for the solitary, sedentary life 
that he leads. I am not learned enough to trace the influence of that life in 
making him what he is; but I think I can see the result in an over-excited 
imagination, and I fancy I can trace his exhibiting his power over the poor 
cousin and his singing of that wonderful song to no more formidable cause than 
inordinate self-conceit. I hope the confession will not lower me seriously in 
your good opinion; but I must say I have enjoyed my visit, and, worse still, 
Miserrimus Dexter really interests me."
"Does this learned discourse on Dexter mean that you are going to see him 
again?" asked Mrs. Macallan.
"I don't know how I may feel about it tomorrow morning," I said; "but my impulse 
at this moment is decidedly to see him again. I had a little talk with him while 
you were away at the other end of the room, and I believe he really can be of 
use to me--"
"Of use to you in what?" interposed my mother-in-law.
"In the one object which I have in view--the object, dear Mrs. Macallan, which I 
regret to say you do not approve."
"And you are going to take him into your confidence? to open your whole mind to 
such a man as the man we have just left?"
"Yes, if I think of it to-morrow as I think of it to-night. I dare say it is a 
risk; but I must run risks. I know I am not prudent; but prudence won't help a 
woman in my position, with my end to gain."
Mrs. Macallan made no further remonstrance in words. She opened a capacious 
pocket in front of the carriage, and took from it a box of matches and a railway 
reading-lamp.
"You provoke me," said the old lady, "into showing you what your husband thinks 
of this new whim of yours. I have got his letter with me--his last letter from 
Spain. You shall judge for yourself, you poor deluded young creature, whether my 
son is worthy of the sacrifice--the useless and hopeless sacrifice--which you 
are bent on making of yourself for his sake. Strike a light!"
I willingly obeyed her. Ever since she had informed me of Eustace's departure to 
Spain I had been eager for more news of him, for something to sustain my 
spirits, after so much that had disappointed and depressed me. Thus far I did 
not even know whether my husband thought of me sometimes in his self-imposed 
exile. As to this regretting already the rash act which had separated us, it was 
still too soon to begin hoping for that.
The lamp having been lighted, and fixed in its place between the two front 
windows of the carriage, Mrs. Macallan produced her son's letter. There is no 
folly like the folly of love. It cost me a hard struggle to restrain myself from 
kissing the paper on which the dear hand had rested.
"There!" said my mother-in-law. "Begin on the second page, the page devoted to 
you. Read straight down to the last line at the bottom, and, in God's name, come 
back to your senses, child, before it is too late!"
I followed my instructions, and read these words:
"Can I trust myself to write of Valeria? I must write of her. Tell me how she 
is, how she looks, what she is doing. I am always thinking of her. Not a day 
passes but I mourn the loss of her. Oh, if she had only been contented to let 
matters rest as they were! Oh, if she had never discovered the miserable truth!
"She spoke of reading the Trial when I saw her last. Has she persisted in doing 
so? I believe--I say this seriously, mother--I believe the shame and the horror 
of it would have been the death of me if I had met her face to face when she 
first knew of the ignominy that I have suffered, of the infamous suspicion of 
which I have been publicly made the subject. Think of those pure eyes looking at 
a man who has been accused (and never wholly absolved) of the foulest and the 
vilest of all murders, and then think of what that man must feel if he have any 
heart and any sense of shame left in him. I sicken as I write of it.
"Does she still meditate that hopeless project--the offspring, poor angel, of 
her artless, unthinking generosity? Does she still fancy that it is in her power 
to assert my innocence before the world? Oh, mother (if she do), use your utmost 
influence to make her give up the idea! Spare her the humiliation, the 
disappointment, the insult, perhaps, to which she may innocently expose herself. 
For her sake, for my sake, leave no means untried to attain this righteous, this 
merciful end.
"I send her no message--I dare not do it. Say nothing, when you see her, which 
can recall me to her memory. On the contrary, help her to forget me as soon as 
possible. The kindest thing I can do--the one atonement I can make to her--is to 
drop out of her life."
With those wretched words it ended. I handed his letter back to his mother in 
silence. She said but little on her side.
"If this doesn't discourage you," she remarked, slowly folding up the letter, 
"nothing will. Let us leave it there, and say no more."
I made no answer--I was crying behind my veil. My domestic prospect looked so 
dreary! my unfortunate husband was so hopelessly misguided, so pitiably wrong! 
The one chance for both of us, and the one consolation for poor Me, was to hold 
to my desperate resolution more firmly than ever. If I had wanted anything to 
confirm me in this view, and to arm me against the remonstrances of every one of 
my friends, Eustace's letter would have proved more than sufficient to answer 
the purpose. At least he had not forgotten me; he thought of me, and he mourned 
the loss of me every day of his life. That was encouragement enough--for the 
present. "If Ariel calls for me in the pony-chaise to-morrow," I thought to 
myself, "with Ariel I go." 



Mrs. Macallan set me down at Benjamin's door.
I mentioned to her at parting--I stood sufficiently in awe of her to put it off 
till the last moment--that Miserrimus Dexter had arranged to send his cousin and 
his pony-chaise to her residence on the next day; and I inquired thereupon 
whether my mother-in-law would permit me to call at her house to wait for the 
appearance of the cousin, or whether she would prefer sending the chaise on to 
Benjamin's cottage. I fully expected an explosion of anger to follow this bold 
avowal of my plans for the next day. The old lady agreeably surprised me. She 
proved that she had really taken a liking to me: she kept her temper.
"If you persist in going back to Dexter, you certainly shall not go to him from 
my door," she said. "But I hope you will not persist. I hope you will awake a 
wiser woman to-morrow morning."
The morning came. A little before noon the arrival of the pony-chaise was 
announced at the door, and a letter was brought in to me from Mrs. Macallan.
"I have no right to control your movements," my mother-in-law wrote. "I send the 
chaise to Mr. Benjamin's house; and I sincerely trust that you will not take 
your place in it. I wish I could persuade you, Valeria, how truly I am your 
friend. I have been thinking about you anxiously in the wakeful hours of the 
night. How anxiously, you will understand when I tell you that I now reproach 
myself for not having done more than I did to prevent your unhappy marriage. And 
yet, what more I could have done I don't really know. My son admitted to me that 
he was courting you under an assumed name, but he never told me what the name 
was. Or who you were, or where your friends lived. Perhaps I ought to have taken 
measures to find this out. Perhaps, if I had succeeded, I ought to have 
interfered and enlightened you, even at the sad sacrifice of making an enemy of 
my own son. I honestly thought I did my duty in expressing my disapproval, and 
in refusing to be present at the marriage. Was I too easily satisfied? It is too 
late to ask. Why do I trouble you with an old woman's vain misgivings and 
regrets? My child, if you come to any harm, I shall feel (indirectly) 
responsible for it. It is this uneasy state of mind which sets me writing, with 
nothing to say that can interest you. Don't go to Dexter! The fear has been 
pursuing me all night that your going to Dexter will end badly. Write him an 
excuse. Valeria! I firmly believe you will repent it if you return to that 
house."
Was ever a woman more plainly warned, more carefully advised, than I? And yet 
warning and advice were both thrown away on me.
Let me say for myself that I was really touched by the kindness of my 
mother-in-law's letter, though I was not shaken by it in the smallest degree. As 
long as I lived, moved, and thought, my one purpose now was to make Miserrimus 
Dexter confide to me his ideas on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death. 
To those ideas I looked as my guiding stars along the dark way on which I was 
going. I wrote back to Mrs. Macallan, as I really felt gratefully and 
penitently. And then I went out to the chaise.



CHAPTER XXVII.
MR. DEXTER AT HOME. 



I FOUND all the idle boys in the neighborhood collected around the pony-chaise, 
expressing, in the occult language of slang, their high enjoyment and 
appreciation at the appearance of "Ariel" in her man's jacket and hat. The pony 
was fidgety--he felt the influence of the popular uproar. His driver sat, whip 
in hand, magnificently impenetrable to the gibes and jests that were flying 
around her. I said "Good-morning" on getting into the chaise. Ariel only said 
"Gee up!" and started the pony. 
I made up my mind to perform the journey to the distant northern suburb in 
silence. It was evidently useless for me to attempt to speak, and experience 
informed me that I need not expect to hear a word fall from the lips of my 
companion. Experience, however, is not always infallible. After driving for half 
an hour in stolid silence, Ariel astounded me by suddenly bursting into speech.
"Do you know what we are coming to?" she asked, keeping her eyes straight 
between the pony's ears.
"No," I answered. "I don't know the road. What are we coming to?"
"We are coming to a canal."
"Well?"
"Well, I have half a mind to upset you in the canal."
This formidable announcement appeared to require some explanation. I took the 
liberty of asking for it.
"Why should you upset me?" I inquired.
"Because I hate you," was the cool and candid reply.
"What have I done to offend you?" I asked next.
"What do you want with the Master?" Ariel asked, in her turn.
"Do you mean Mr. Dexter?"
"Yes."
"I want to have some talk with Mr. Dexter."
"You don't! You want to take my place. You want to brush his hair and oil his 
beard, instead of me. You wretch!"
I now began to understand. The idea which Miserrimus Dexter had jestingly put 
into her head, in exhibiting her to us on the previous night, had been ripening 
slowly in that dull brain, and had found its way outward into words, about 
fifteen hours afterward, under the irritating influence of my presence!
"I don't want to touch his hair or his beard," I said. "I leave that entirely to 
you."
She looked around at me, her fat face flushing, her dull eyes dilating, with the 
unaccustomed effort to express herself in speech, and to understand what was 
said to her in return.
"Say that again," she burst out. "And say it slower this time."
I said it again, and I said it slower.
"Swear it!" she cried, getting more and more excited.
I preserved my gravity (the canal was just visible in the distance), and swore 
it.
"Are you satisfied now?" I asked.
There was no answer. Her last resources of speech were exhausted. The strange 
creature looked back again straight between the pony's ears, emitted hoarsely a 
grunt of relief, and never more looked at me, never more spoke to me, for the 
rest of the journey. We drove past the banks of the canal, and I escaped 
immersion. We rattled, in our jingling little vehicle, through the streets and 
across the waste patches of ground, which I dimly remembered in the darkness, 
and which looked more squalid and more hideous than ever in the broad daylight. 
The chaise turned down a lane, too narrow for the passage of any larger vehicle, 
and stopped at a wall and a gate that were new objects to me. Opening the gate 
with her key, and leading the pony, Ariel introduced me to the back garden and 
yard of Miserrimus Dexter's rotten and rambling old house. The pony walked off 
independently to his stable, with the chaise behind him. My silent companion led 
me through a bleak and barren kitchen, and along a stone passage. Opening a door 
at the end, she admitted me to the back of the hall, into which Mrs. Macallan 
and I had penetrated by the front entrance to the house. Here Ariel lifted a 
whistle which hung around her neck, and blew the shrill trilling notes with the 
sound of which I was already familiar as the means of communication between 
Miserrimus Dexter and his slave. The whistling over, the slave's unwilling lips 
struggled into speech for the last time.
"Wait till you hear the Master's whistle," she said; "then go upstairs."
So! I was to be whistled for like a dog! And, worse still, there was no help for 
it but to submit like a dog. Had Ariel any excuses to make? Nothing of the sort.
She turned her shapeless back on me and vanished into the kitchen region of the 
house.
After waiting for a minute or two, and hearing no signal from the floor above, I 
advanced into the broader and brighter part of the hall, to look by daylight at 
the pictures which I had only imperfectly discovered in the darkness of the 
night. A painted inscription in many colors, just under the cornice of the 
ceiling, informed me that the works on the walls were the production of the 
all-accomplished Dexter himself. Not satisfied with being poet and composer, he 
was painter as well. On one wall the subjects were described as "Illustrations 
of the Passions;" on the other, as "Episodes in the Life of the Wandering Jew." 
Chance speculators like myself were gravely warned, by means of the inscription, 
to view the pictures as efforts of pure imagination. "Persons who look for mere 
Nature in works of Art" (the inscription announced) "are persons to whom Mr. 
Dexter does not address himself with the brush. He relies entirely on his 
imagination. Nature puts him out."
Taking due care to dismiss all ideas of Nature from my mind, to begin with, I 
looked at the pictures which represented the Passions first.
Little as I knew critically of Art, I could see that Miserrimus Dexter knew 
still less of the rules of drawing, color, and composition. His pictures were, 
in the strictest meaning of that expressive word, Daubs. The diseased and 
riotous delight of the painter in representing Horrors was (with certain 
exceptions to be hereafter mentioned) the one remarkable quality that I could 
discover in the series of his works.
The first of the Passion pictures illustrated Revenge. A corpse, in fancy 
costume, lay on the bank of a foaming river, under the shade of a giant tree. An 
infuriated man, also in fancy costume, stood astride over the dead body, with 
his sword lifted to the lowering sky, and watched, with a horrid expression of 
delight, the blood of the man whom he had just killed dripping slowly in a 
procession of big red drops down the broad blade of his weapon. The next picture 
illustrated Cruelty, in many compartments. In one I saw a disemboweled horse 
savagely spurred on by his rider at a bull-fight. In another, an aged 
philosopher was dissecting a living cat, and gloating over his work. In a third, 
two pagans politely congratulated each other on the torture of two saints: one 
saint was roasting on a grid-iron; the other, hung up to a tree by his heels, 
had been just skinned, and was not quite dead yet. Feeling no great desire, 
after these specimens, to look at any more of the illustrated Passions, I turned 
to the opposite wall to be instructed in the career of the Wandering Jew. Here a 
second inscription informed me that the painter considered the Flying Dutchman 
to be no other than the Wandering Jew, pursuing his interminable Journey by sea. 
The marine adventures of this mysterious personage were the adventures chosen 
for representation by Dexter's brush. The first picture showed me a harbor on a 
rocky coast. A vessel was at anchor, with the helmsman singing on the deck. The 
sea in the offing was black and rolling; thunder-clouds lay low on the horizon, 
split by broad flashes of lightning. In the glare of the lightning, heaving and 
pitching, appeared the misty form of the Phantom Ship approaching the shore. In 
this work, badly as it was painted, there were really signs of a powerful 
imagination, and even of a poetical feeling for the supernatural. The next 
picture showed the Phantom Ship, moored (to the horror and astonishment of the 
helmsman) behind the earthly vessel in the harbor. The Jew had stepped on shore. 
His boat was on the beach. His crew--little men with stony, white faces, dressed 
in funeral black--sat in silent rows on the seats of the boat, with their oars 
in their lean, long hands. The Jew, also a black, stood with his eyes and hands 
raised imploringly to the thunderous heaven. The wild creatures of land and 
sea--the tiger, the rhinoceros, the crocodile, the sea-serpent, the shark, and 
the devil-fish--surrounded the accursed Wanderer in a mystic circle, daunted and 
fascinated at the sight of him. The lightning was gone. The sky and sea had 
darkened to a great black blank. A faint and lurid light lighted the scene, 
falling downward from a torch, brandished by an avenging Spirit that hovered 
over the Jew on outspread vulture wings. Wild as the picture might be in its 
conception, there was a suggestive power in it which I confess strongly 
impressed me. The mysterious silence in the house, and my strange position at 
the moment, no doubt had their effect on my mind. While I was still looking at 
the ghastly composition before me, the shrill trilling sound of the whistle 
upstairs burst on the stillness. For the moment my nerves were so completely 
upset that I started with a cry of alarm. I felt a momentary impulse to open the 
door and run out. The idea of trusting myself alone with the man who had painted 
those frightful pictures actually terrified me; I was obliged to sit down on one 
of the hall chairs. Some minutes passed before my mind recovered its balance, 
and I began to feel like my own ordinary self again. The whistle sounded 
impatiently for the second time. I rose and ascended the broad flight of stairs 
which led to the first story. To draw back at the point which I had now reached 
would have utterly degraded me in my own estimation. Still, my heart did 
certainly beat faster than usual as I approached the door of the circular 
anteroom; and I honestly acknowledge that I saw my own imprudence, just then, in 
a singularly vivid light.
There was a glass over the mantel-piece in the anteroom. I lingered for a moment 
(nervous as I was) to see how I looked in the glass.
The hanging tapestry over the inner door had been left partially drawn aside. 
Softly as I moved, the dog's ears of Miserrimus Dexter caught the sound of my 
dress on the floor. The fine tenor voice, which I had last heard singing, called 
to me softly.
"Is that Mrs. Valeria? Please don't wait there. Come in!"
I entered the inner room.
The wheeled chair advanced to meet me, so slowly and so softly that I hardly 
knew it again. Miserrimus Dexter languidly held out his hand. His head inclined 
pensively to one side; his large blue eyes looked at me piteously. Not a vestige 
seemed to be left of the raging, shouting creature of my first visit, who was 
Napoleon at one moment, and Shakespeare at another. Mr. Dexter of the morning 
was a mild, thoughtful, melancholy man, who only recalled Mr. Dexter of the 
night by the inveterate oddity of his dress. His jacket, on this occasion, was 
of pink quilted silk. The coverlet which hid his deformity matched the jacket in 
pale sea-green satin; and, to complete these strange vagaries of costume, his 
wrists were actually adorned with massive bracelets of gold, formed on the 
severely simple models which have descended to us from ancient times.
"How good of you to cheer and charm me by coming here!" he said, in his most 
mournful and most musical tones. "I have dressed, expressly to receive you, in 
the prettiest clothes I have. Don't be surprised. Except in this ignoble and 
material nineteenth century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful 
colors as well as women. A hundred years ago a gentleman in pink silk was a 
gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen hundred years ago the patricians of the 
classic times wore bracelets exactly like mine. I despise the brutish contempt 
for beauty and the mean dread of expense which degrade a gentleman's costume to 
black cloth, and limit a gentleman's ornaments to a finger-ring, in the age I 
live in. I like to be bright and I beautiful, especially when brightness and 
beauty come to see me. You don't know how precious your society is to me. This 
is one of my melancholy days. Tears rise unbidden to my eyes. I sigh and sorrow 
over myself; I languish for pity. Just think of what I am! A poor solitary 
creature, cursed with a frightful deformity. How pitiable! how dreadful! My 
affectionate heart--wasted. My extraordinary talents--useless or misapplied. 
Sad! sad! sad! Please pity me."
His eyes were positively filled with tears--tears of compassion for himself! He 
looked at me and spoke to me with the wailing, querulous entreaty of a sick 
child wanting to be nursed. I was utterly at a loss what to do. It was perfectly 
ridiculous--but I was never more embarrassed in my life.
"Please pity me!" he repeated. "Don't be cruel. I only ask a little thing. 
Pretty Mrs. Valeria, say you pity me!"
I said I pitied him--and I felt that I blushed as I did it.
"Thank you," said Miserrimus Dexter, humbly. "It does me good. Go a little 
further. Pat my hand."
I tried to restrain myself; but the sense of the absurdity of this last petition 
(quite gravely addressed to me, remember!) was too strong to be controlled. I 
burst out laughing.
Miserrimus Dexter looked at me with a blank astonishment which only increased my 
merriment. Had I offended him? Apparently not. Recovering from his astonishment, 
he laid his head luxuriously on the back of his chair, with the expression of a 
man who was listening critically to a performance of some sort. When I had quite 
exhausted myself, he raised his head and clapped his shapely white hands, and 
honored me with an "encore."
"Do it again," he said, still in the same childish way. "Merry Mrs. Valeria, you 
have a musical laugh--I have a musical ear. Do it again."
I was serious enough by this time. "I am ashamed of myself, Mr. Dexter," I said. 
"Pray forgive me."
He made no answer to this; I doubt if he heard me. His variable temper appeared 
to be in course of undergoing some new change. He sat looking at my dress (as I 
supposed) with a steady and anxious attention, gravely forming his own 
conclusions, steadfastly pursuing his own train of thought.
"Mrs. Valeria," he burst out suddenly, "you are not comfortable in that chair."
"Pardon me," I replied; "I am quite comfortable."
"Pardon me," he rejoined. "There is a chair of Indian basket-work at that end of 
the room which is much better suited to you. Will you accept my apologies if I 
am rude enough to allow you to fetch it for yourself? I have a reason."
He had a reason! What new piece of eccentricity was he about to exhibit? I rose 
and fetched the chair. It was light enough to be quite easily carried. As I 
returned to him, I noticed that his eyes were strangely employed in what seemed 
to be the closest scrutiny of my dress. And, stranger still, the result of this 
appeared to be partly to interest and partly to distress him.
I placed the chair near him, and was about to take my seat in it, when he sent 
me back again, on another errand, to the end of the room.
"Oblige me indescribably," he said. "There is a hand-screen hanging on the wall, 
which matches the chair. We are rather near the fire here. You may find the 
screen useful. Once more forgive me for letting you fetch it for yourself. Once 
more let me assure you that I have a reason."
Here was his "reason," reiterated, emphatically reiterated, for the second time! 
Curiosity made me as completely the obedient servant of his caprices as Ariel 
herself. I fetched the hand-screen. Returning with it, I met his eyes still 
fixed with the same incomprehensible attention on my perfectly plain and 
unpretending dress, and still expressing the same curious mixture of interest 
and regret.
"Thank you a thousand times," he said. "You have (quite innocently) wrung my 
heart. But you have not the less done me an inestimable kindness. Will you 
promise not to be offended with me if I confess the truth?"
He was approaching his explanation I never gave a promise more readily in my 
life.
"I have rudely allowed you to fetch your chair and your screen for yourself," he 
went on. "My motive will seem a very strange one, I am afraid. Did you observe 
that I noticed you very attentively--too attentively, perhaps?"
"Yes," I said. "I thought you were noticing my dress."
He shook his head, and sighed bitterly.
"Not your dress," he said; "and not your face. Your dress is dark. Your face is 
still strange to me. Dear Mrs. Valeria, I wanted to see you walk."
To see me walk! What did he mean? Where was that erratic mind of his wandering 
to now?
"You have a rare accomplishment for an Englishwoman," he resumed--"you walk 
well. She walked well. I couldn't resist the temptation of seeing her again, in 
seeing you. It was her movement, her sweet, simple, unsought grace (not yours), 
when you walked to the end of the room and returned to me. You raised her from 
the dead when you fetched the chair and the screen. Pardon me for making use of 
you: the idea was innocent, the motive was sacred. You have distressed--and 
delighted me. My heart bleeds--and thanks you."
He paused for a moment; he let his head droop on his breast, then suddenly 
raised it again.
"Surely we were talking about her last night?" he said. "What did I say? what 
did you say? My memory is confused; I half remember, half forget. Please remind 
me. You're not offended with me--are you?"
I might have been offended with another man. Not with him. I was far too anxious 
to find my way into his confidence--now that he had touched of his own accord on 
the subject of Eustace's first wife--to be offended with Miserrimus Dexter.
"We were speaking," I answered, "of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death, and we were 
saying to one another--"
He interrupted me, leaning forward eagerly in his chair.
"Yes! yes!" he exclaimed. "And I was wondering what interest you could have in 
penetrating the mystery of her death. Tell me! Confide in me! I am dying to 
know!"
"Not even you have a stronger interest in that subject than the interest that I 
feel," I said. "The happiness of my whole life to come depends on my clearing up 
the mystery."
"Good God--why?" he cried. "Stop! I am exciting myself. I mustn't do that. I 
must have all my wits about me; I mustn't wander. The thing is too serious. Wait 
a minute!"
An elegant little basket was hooked on to one of the arms of his chair. He 
opened it, and drew out a strip of embroidery partially finished, with the 
necessary materials for working, a complete. We looked at each other across the 
embroidery. He noticed my surprise.
"Women," he said, "wisely compose their minds, and help themselves to think 
quietly, by doing needle-work. Why are men such fools as to deny themselves the 
same admirable resource--the simple and soothing occupation which keeps the 
nerves steady and leaves the mind calm and free? As a man, I follow the woman's 
wise example. Mrs. Valeria, permit me to compose myself."
Gravely arranging his embroidery, this extraordinary being began to work with 
the patient and nimble dexterity of an accomplished needle-woman.
"Now," said Miserrimus Dexter, "if you are ready, I am. You talk--I work. Please 
begin."
I obeyed him, and began.



CHAPTER XXVIII.
IN THE DARK. 



WITH such a man as Miserrimus Dexter, and with such a purpose as I had in view, 
no half-confidences were possible. I must either risk the most unreserved 
acknowledgment of the interests that I really had at stake, or I must make the 
best excuse that occurred to me for abandoning my contemplated experiment at the 
last moment. In my present critical situation, no such refuge as a middle course 
lay before me--even if I had been inclined to take it. As things were, I ran 
risks, and plunged headlong into my own affairs at starting.
"Thus far, you know little or nothing about me, Mr. Dexter," I said. "You are, 
as I believe, quite unaware that my husband and I are not living together at the 
present time."
"Is it necessary to mention your husband?" he asked, coldly, without looking up 
from his embroidery, and without pausing in his work.
"It is absolutely necessary," I answered. "I can explain myself to you in no 
other way."
He bent his head, and sighed resignedly.
"You and your husband are not living together at the present time," he resumed. 
"Does that mean that Eustace has left you?"
"He has left me, and has gone abroad."
"Without any necessity for it?"
"Without the least necessity."
"Has he appointed no time for his return to you?"
"If he persevere in his present resolution, Mr. Dexter, Eustace will never 
return to me."
For the first time he raised his head from his embroidery--with a sudden 
appearance of interest.
"Is the quarrel so serious as that?" he asked. "Are you free of each other, 
pretty Mrs. Valeria, by common consent of both parties?"
The tone in which he put the question was not at all to my liking. The look he 
fixed on me was a look which unpleasantly suggested that I had trusted myself 
alone with him, and that he might end in taking advantage of it. I reminded him 
quietly, by my manner more than by my words, of the respect which he owed to me.
"You are entirely mistaken," I said. "There is no anger--there is not even a 
misunderstanding between us. Our parting has cost bitter sorrow, Mr. Dexter, to 
him and to me."
He submitted to be set right with ironical resignation. "I am all attention," he 
said, threading his needle. "Pray go on; I won't interrupt you again." Acting on 
this invitation, I told him the truth about my husband and myself quite 
unreservedly, taking care, however, at the same time, to put Eustace's motives 
in the best light that they would bear. Miserrimus Dexter dropped his embroidery 
on his lap, and laughed softly to himself, with an impish enjoyment of my poor 
little narrative, which set every nerve in me on edge as I looked at him.
"I see nothing to laugh at," I said, sharply.
His beautiful blue eyes rested on me with a look of innocent surprise.
"Nothing to laugh at," he repeated, "in such an exhibition of human folly as you 
have just described?" His expression suddenly changed his face darkened and 
hardened very strangely. "Stop!" he cried, before I could answer him. "There can 
be only one reason for you're taking it as seriously as you do. Mrs. Valeria! 
you are fond of your husband."
"Fond of him isn't strong enough to express it," I retorted. "I love him with my 
whole heart."
Miserrimus Dexter stroked his magnificent beard, and contemplatively repeated my 
words. "You love him with your whole heart? Do you know why?"
"Because I can't help it," I answered, doggedly.
He smiled satirically, and went on with his embroidery. "Curious!" he said to 
himself; "Eustace's first wife loved him too. There are some men whom the women 
all like, and there are other men whom the women never care for. Without the 
least reason for it in either case. The one man is just as good as the other; 
just as handsome, as agreeable, as honorable, and as high in rank as the other. 
And yet for Number One they will go through fire and water, and for Number Two 
they won't so much as turn their heads to look at him. Why? They don't know 
themselves--as Mrs. Valeria has just said! Is there a physical reason for it? Is 
there some potent magnetic emanation from Number One which Number Two doesn't 
possess? I must investigate this when I have the time, and when I find myself in 
the humor." Having so far settled the question to his own entire satisfaction, 
he looked up at me again. "I am still in the dark about you and your motives," 
he said. "I am still as far as ever from understanding what your interest is in 
investigating that hideous tragedy at Gleninch. Clever Mrs. Valeria, please take 
me by the hand, and lead me into the light. You're not offended with me are you? 
Make it up; and I will give you this pretty piece of embroidery when I have done 
it. I am only a poor, solitary, deformed wretch, with a quaint turn of mind; I 
mean no harm. Forgive me! indulge me! enlighten me!"
He resumed his childish ways; he recover, his innocent smile, with the odd 
little puckers and wrinkles accompanying it at the corners of his eyes. I began 
to doubt whether I might not have been unreasonably hard on him. I penitently 
resolved to be more considerate toward his infirmities of mind and body during 
the remainder of my visit.
"Let me go back for a moment, Mr. Dexter, to past times at Gleninch," I said. 
"You agree with me in believing Eustace to be absolutely innocent of the crime 
for which he was tried. Your evidence at the Trial tells me that."
He paused over his work, and looked at me with a grave and stern attention which 
presented his face in quite a new light.
"That is our opinion," I resumed. "But it was not the opinion of the Jury. Their 
verdict, you remember, was Not Proven. In plain English, the Jury who tried my 
husband declined to express their opinion, positively and publicly, that he was 
innocent. Am I right?"
Instead of answering, he suddenly put his embroidery back in the basket, and 
moved the machinery of his chair, so as to bring it close by mine.
"Who told you this?" he asked.
"I found it for myself in a book."
Thus far his face had expressed steady attention--and no more. Now, for the 
first time, I thought I saw something darkly passing over him which betrayed 
itself to my mind as rising distrust.
"Ladies are not generally in the habit of troubling their heads about dry 
questions of law," he said. "Mrs. Eustace Macallan the Second, you must have 
some very powerful motive for turning your studies that way."
"I have a very powerful motive, Mr. Dexter My husband is resigned to the Scotch 
Verdict His mother is resigned to it. His friends (so far as I know) are 
resigned to it--"
"Well?"
"Well! I don't agree with my husband, or his mother, or his friends. I refuse to 
submit to the Scotch Verdict."
The instant I said those words, the madness in him which I had hitherto denied, 
seemed to break out. He suddenly stretched himself over his chair: he pounced on 
me, with a hand on each of my shoulders; his wild eyes questioned me fiercely, 
frantically, within a few inches of my face.
"What do you mean?" he shouted, at the utmost pitch of his ringing and resonant 
voice.
A deadly fear of him shook me. I did my best to hide the outward betrayal of it. 
By look and word, I showed him, as firmly as I could, that I resented the 
liberty he had taken with me.
"Remove your hands, sir," I said, "and retire to your proper place."
He obeyed me mechanically. He apologized to me mechanically. His whole mind was 
evidently still filled with the words that I had spoken to him, and still bent 
on discovering what those words meant.
"I beg your pardon," he said; "I humbly beg your pardon. The subject excites me, 
frightens me, maddens me. You don't know what a difficulty I have in controlling 
myself. Never mind. Don't take me seriously. Don't be frightened at me. I am so 
ashamed of myself--I feel so small and so miserable at having offended you. Make 
me suffer for it. Take a stick and beat me. Tie me down in my chair. Call up 
Ariel, who is as strong as a horse, and tell her to hold me. Dear Mrs. Valeria! 
Injured Mrs. Valeria! I'll endure anything in the way of punishment, if you will 
only tell me what you mean by not submitting to the Scotch Verdict." He backed 
his chair penitently as he made that entreaty. "Am I far enough away yet?" he 
asked, with a rueful look. "Do I still frighten you? I'll drop out of sight, if 
you prefer it, in the bottom of the chair."
He lifted the sea-green coverlet. In another moment he would have disappeared 
like a puppet in a show if I had not stopped him.
"Say nothing more, and do nothing more; I accept your apologies," I said. "When 
I tell you that I refuse to submit to the opinion of the Scotch Jury, I mean 
exactly what my words express. That verdict has left a stain on my husband's 
character. He feels the stain bitterly. How bitterly no one knows so well as I 
do. His sense of his degradation is the sense that has parted him from me. It is 
not enough for him that I am persuaded of his innocence. Nothing will bring him 
back to me--nothing will persuade Eustace that I think him worthy to be the 
guide and companion of my life--but the proof of his innocence, set before the 
Jury which doubts it, and the public which doubts it, to this day. He and his 
friends and his lawyers all despair of ever finding that proof now. But I am his 
wife; and none of you love him as I love him. I alone refuse to despair; I alone 
refuse to listen to reason. If God spare me, Mr. Dexter, I dedicate my life to 
the vindication of my husband's innocence. You are his old friend--I am here to 
ask you to help me."
It appeared to be now my turn to frighten him. The color left his face. He 
passed his hand restlessly over his forehead, as if he were trying to brush some 
delusion out of his brain.
"Is this one of my dreams?" he asked, faintly. "Are you a Vision of the night?"
"I am only a friendless woman," I said, "who has lost all that she loved and 
prized, and who is trying to win it back again."
He began to move his chair nearer to me once more. I lifted my hand. He stopped 
the chair directly. There was a moment of silence. We sat watching one another. 
I saw his hands tremble as he laid them on the coverlet; I saw his face grow 
paler and paler, and his under lip drop. What dead and buried remembrances had I 
brought to life in him, in all their olden horror?
He was the first to speak again.
"So this is your interest," he said, "in clearing up the mystery of Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan's death?"
"Yes."
"And you believe that I can help you?"
"I do."
He slowly lifted one of his hands, and pointed at me with his long forefinger.
"You suspect somebody," he said.
The tone in which he spoke was low and threatening; it warned me to be careful. 
At the same time, if I now shut him out of my confidence, I should lose the 
reward that might yet be to come, for all that I had suffered and risked at that 
perilous interview.
"You suspect somebody," he repeated.
"Perhaps!" was all that I said in return.
"Is the person within your reach?"
"Not yet."
"Do you know where the person is?"
"No."
He laid his head languidly on the back of his chair, with a trembling long-drawn 
sigh. Was he disappointed? Or was he relieved? Or was he simply exhausted in 
mind and body alike? Who could fathom him? Who could say?
"Will you give me five minutes?" he asked, feebly and wearily, without raising 
his head. "You know already how any reference to events at Gleninch excites and 
shakes me. I shall be fit for it again, if you will kindly give me a few minutes 
to myself. There are books in the next room. Please excuse me."
I at once retired to the circular antechamber. He followed me in his chair, and 
closed the door between us.



CHAPTER XXIX.
IN THE LIGHT.



A LITTLE interval of solitude was a relief to me, as well as to Miserrimus 
Dexter.
Startling doubts beset me as I walked restlessly backward and forward, now in 
the anteroom, and now in the corridor outside. It was plain that I had (quite 
innocently) disturbed the repose of some formidable secrets in Miserrimus 
Dexter's mind. I confused and wearied my poor brains in trying to guess what the 
secrets might be. All my ingenuity--as after-events showed me--was wasted on 
speculations not one of which even approached the truth. I was on surer ground 
when I arrived at the conclusion that Dexter had really kept every mortal 
creature out of his confidence. He could never have betrayed such serious signs 
of disturbance as I had noticed in him, if he had publicly acknowledged at the 
Trial, or if he had privately communicated to any chosen friend, all that he 
knew of the tragic and terrible drama acted in the bedchamber at Gleninch. What 
powerful influence had induced him to close his lips? Had he been silent in 
mercy to others? or in dread of consequences to himself? Impossible to tell! 
Could I hope that he would confide to Me what he had kept secret from Justice 
and Friendship alike? When he knew what I really wanted of him, would he arm me, 
out of his own stores of knowledge, with the weapon that would win me victory in 
the struggle to come? The chances were against it--there was no denying that. 
Still the end was worth trying for. The caprice of the moment might yet stand my 
friend, with such a wayward being as Miserrimus Dexter. My plans and projects 
were sufficiently strange, sufficiently wide of the ordinary limits of a woman's 
thoughts and actions, to attract his sympathies. "Who knows," I thought to 
myself, "if I may not take his confidence by surprise, by simply telling him the 
truth?"
The interval expired; the door was thrown open; the voice of my host summoned me 
again to the inner room.
"Welcome back!" said Miserrimus Dexter.
"Dear Mrs. Valeria, I am quite myself again. How are you?"
He looked and spoke with the easy cordiality of an old friend. During the period 
of my absence, short as it was, another change had passed over this most 
multiform of living beings. His eyes sparkled with good-humor; his cheeks were 
flushing under a new excitement of some sort. Even his dress had undergone 
alteration since I had seen it last. He now wore an extemporized cap of white 
paper; his ruffles were tucked up; a clean apron was thrown over the sea-green 
coverlet. He hacked his chair before me, bowing and smiling, and waved me to a 
seat with the grace of a dancing master, chastened by the dignity of a lord in 
waiting.
"I am going to cook," he announced, with the most engaging simplicity. "We both 
stand in need of refreshment before we return to the serious business of our 
interview. You see me in my cook's dress; forgive it. There is a form in these 
things. I am a great stickler for forms. I have been taking some wine. Please 
sanction that proceeding by taking some wine too."
He filled a goblet of ancient Venetian glass with a purple-red liquor, beautiful 
to see.
"Burgundy!" he said--"the king of wine: And this is the king of Burgundies--Clos 
Vougeot. I drink to your health and happiness!"
He filled a second goblet for himself, and honored the toast by draining it to 
the bottom. I now understood the sparkle in his eyes and the flush in his 
cheeks. It was my interest not to offend him. I drank a little of his wine, and 
I quite agreed with him. I thought it delicious.
"What shall we eat?" he asked. "It must be something worthy of our Clos Vougeot. 
Ariel is good at roasting and boiling joints, poor wretch! but I don't insult 
your taste by offering you Ariel's cookery. Plain joints!" he exclaimed, with an 
expression of refined disgust. "Bah! A man who eats a plain joint is only one 
remove from a cannibal or a butcher. Will you leave it to me to discover 
something more worthy of us? Let us go to the kitchen."
He wheeled his chair around, and invited me to accompany him with a courteous 
wave of his hand.
I followed the chair to some closed curtains at one end of the room, which I had 
not hitherto noticed. Drawing aside the curtains, he revealed to view an alcove, 
in which stood a neat little gas-stove for cooking. Drawers and cupboards, 
plates, dishes, and saucepans, were ranged around the alcove--all on a miniature 
scale, all scrupulously bright and clean. "Welcome to the kitchen!" said 
Miserrimus Dexter. He drew out of a recess in the wall a marble slab, which 
served as a table, and reflected profoundly, with his hand to his head. "I have 
it!" he cried, and opening one of the cupboards next, took from it a black 
bottle of a form that was new to me. Sounding this bottle with a spike, he 
pierced and produced to view some little irregularly formed black objects, which 
might have been familiar enough to a woman accustomed to the luxurious tables of 
the rich, but which were a new revelation to a person like myself, who had led a 
simple country life in the house of a clergyman with small means. When I saw my 
host carefully lay out these occult substances of uninviting appearance on a 
clean napkin, and then plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of 
them, my curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, "What are 
those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going to eat them?"
He started at the rash question, and looked at me with hands outspread in 
irrepressible astonishment.
"Where is our boasted progress?" he cried. What is education but a name? Here is 
a cultivated person who doesn't know Truffles when she sees them!"
"I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never saw them before. We 
had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr. Dexter, at home in the North."
Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his spike, and held it 
up to me in a favorable light.
"Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this life which has no 
ingredient of disappointment lurking under the surface," he said. "Look at it; 
meditate over it. You shall eat it, Mrs. Valeria, stewed in Burgundy!"
He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who was about to offer me 
an inestimable proof of his good-will.
"Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said, "dating from the 
moment when I take this in my hand." He produced a bright little stew-pan from 
his collection of culinary utensils as he spoke. "Properly pursued, the Art of 
Cookery allows of no divided attention," he continued, gravely. "In that 
observation you will find the reason why no woman ever has reached, or ever will 
reach, the highest distinction as a cook. As a rule, women are incapable of 
absolutely concentrating their attention on any one occupation for any given 
time. Their minds will run on something else--say; typically, for the sake of 
illustration, their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle, Mrs. 
Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the various industrial processes of 
life is not raised, as the women vainly suppose, by the defective institutions 
of the age they live in. No! the obstacle is in themselves. No institutions that 
can be devised to encourage them will ever be strong enough to contend 
successfully with the sweetheart and the new bonnet. A little while ago, for 
instance, I was instrumental in getting women employed in our local post-office 
here. The other day I took the trouble--a serious business to me--of getting 
downstairs, and wheeling myself away to the office to see how they were getting 
on. I took a letter with me to register. It had an unusually long address. The 
registering woman began copying the address on the receipt form, in a 
business-like manner cheering and delightful to see. Half way through, a little 
child-sister of one of the other women employed trotted into the office, and 
popped under the counter to go and speak to her relative. The registering 
woman's mind instantly gave way. Her pencil stopped; her eyes wandered off to 
the child with a charming expression of interest. 'Well, Lucy,' she said, 'how 
d'ye do?' Then she remembered business again, and returned to her receipt. When 
I took it across the counter, an important line in the address of my letter was 
left out in the copy. Thanks to Lucy. Now a man in the same position would not 
have seen Lucy--he would have been too closely occupied with what he was about 
at the moment. There is the whole difference between the mental constitution of 
the sexes, which no legislation will ever alter as long as the world lasts! What 
does it matter? Women are infinitely superior to men in the moral qualities 
which are the true adornments of humanity. Be content--oh, my mistaken sisters, 
be content with that!"
He twisted his chair around toward the stove. It was useless to dispute the 
question with him, even if I had felt inclined to do so. He absorbed himself in 
his stew-pan.
I looked about me in the room.
The same insatiable relish for horrors exhibited downstairs by the pictures in 
the hall was displayed again here. The photographs hanging on the wall 
represented the various forms of madness taken from the life. The plaster casts 
ranged on the shelf opposite were casts (after death) of the heads of famous 
murderers. A frightful little skeleton of a woman hung in a cupboard, behind a 
glazed door, with this cynical inscription placed above the skull: "Behold the 
scaffolding on which beauty is built!" In a corresponding cupboard, with the 
door wide open, there hung in loose folds a shirt (as I took it to be) of 
chamois leather. Touching it (and finding it to be far softer than any chamois 
leather that my fingers had ever felt before), I disarranged the folds, and 
disclosed a ticket pinned among them, describing the thing in these horrid 
lines: "Skin of a French Marquis, tanned in the Revolution of Ninety-three. Who 
says the nobility are not good for something? They make good leather."
After this last specimen of my host's taste in curiosities, I pursued my 
investigation no further. I returned to my chair, and waited for the truffles.
After a brief interval, the voice of the poet-painter-composer-and-cook summoned 
me back to the alcove.
The gas was out. The stew-pan and its accompaniments had vanished. On the marble 
slab were two plates, two napkins, two rolls of bread, and a dish, with another 
napkin in it, on which reposed two quaint little black balls. Miserrimus Dexter, 
regarding me with a smile of benevolent interest, put one of the balls on my 
plate, and took the other himself. "Compose yourself, Mrs. Valeria," he said. 
"This is an epoch in your life. Your first Truffle! Don't touch it with the 
knife. Use the fork alone. And--pardon me; this is most important--eat slowly."
I followed my instructions, and assumed an enthusiasm which I honestly confess I 
did not feel. I privately thought the new vegetable a great deal too rich, and 
in other respects quite unworthy of the fuss that had been made about it. 
Miserrimus Dexter lingered and languished over his truffles, and sipped his 
wonderful Burgundy, and sang his own praises as a cook until I was really almost 
mad with impatience to return to the real object of my visit. In the reckless 
state of mind which this feeling produced, I abruptly reminded my host that he 
was wasting our time, by the most dangerous question that I could possibly put 
to him.
"Mr. Dexter," I said, "have you seen anything lately of Mrs. Beauly?"
The easy sense of enjoyment expressed in his face left it at those rash words, 
and went out like a suddenly extinguished light. That furtive distrust of me 
which I had already noticed instantly made itself felt again in his manner and 
in his voice.
"Do you know Mrs. Beauly?" he asked.
"I only know her," I answered, "by what I have read of her in the Trial."
He was not satisfied with that reply.
"You must have an interest of some sort in Mrs. Beauly," he said, "or you would 
not have asked me about her. Is it the interest of a friend, or the interest of 
an enemy?"
Rash as I might be, I was not quite reckless enough yet to meet that plain 
question by an equally plain reply. I saw enough in his face to warn me to be 
careful with him before it was too late.
"I can only answer you in one way," I rejoined. "I must return to a subject 
which is very painful to you--the subject of the Trial."
"Go on," he said, with one of his grim outbursts of humor. "Here I am at your 
mercy--a martyr at the stake. Poke the fire! poke the fire!"
"I am only an ignorant woman," I resumed, "and I dare say I am quite wrong; but 
there is one part of my husband's trial which doesn't at all satisfy me. The 
defense set up for him seems to me to have been a complete mistake."
"A complete mistake?" he repeated. "Strange language, Mrs. Valeria, to say the 
least of it!" He tried to speak lightly; he took up his goblet of wine; but I 
could see that I had produced an effect on him. His hand trembled as it carried 
the wine to his lips.
"I don't doubt that Eustace's first wife really asked him to buy the arsenic," I 
continued. "I don't doubt that she used it secretly to improve her complexion. 
But what I do not believe is that she died of an overdose of the poison, taken 
by mistake."
He put back the goblet of wine on the table near him so unsteadily that he 
spilled the greater part of it. For a moment his eyes met mine, then looked down 
again.
"How do you believe she died?" he inquired, in tones so low that I could barely 
hear them.
"By the hand of a poisoner," I answered.
He made a movement as if he were about to start up in the chair, and sank back 
again, seized, apparently, with a sudden faintness.
"Not my husband!" I hastened to add. "You know that I am satisfied of his 
innocence."
I saw him shudder. I saw his hands fasten their hold convulsively on the arms of 
his chair.
"Who poisoned her?" he asked, still lying helplessly back in the chair.
At the critical moment my courage failed me. I was afraid to tell him in what 
direction my suspicions pointed.
"Can't you guess?" I said.
There was a pause. I supposed him to be seceretly following his own train of 
thought. It was not for long. On a sudden he started up in his chair. The 
prostration which had possessed him appeared to vanish in an instant. His eyes 
recovered their wild light; his hands were steady again; his color was brighter 
than ever. Had he been pondering over the secret of my interest in Mrs. Beauly? 
and had he guessed? He had!
"Answer on your word of honor!" he cried. "Don't attempt to deceive me! Is it a 
woman?"
"It is."
"What is the first letter of her name? Is it one of the first three letters of 
the alphabet?"
"Yes."
"B?"
"Yes."
"Beauly?"
"Beauly."
He threw his hands up above his head, and burst into a frantic fit of laughter.
"I have lived long enough!" he broke out, wildly. "At last I have discovered one 
other person in the world who sees it as plainly as I do. Cruel Mrs. Valeria! 
why did you torture me? Why didn't you own it before?"
"What!" I exclaimed, catching the infection of his excitement. "Are your ideas 
my ideas? Is it possible that you suspect Mrs. Beauly too?"
He made this remarkable reply:
"Suspect?" he repeated, contemptuously. "There isn't the shadow of a doubt about 
it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her."



CHAPTER XXX.
THE INDICTMENT OF MRS. BEAULY.



I STARTED to my feet, and looked at Miserrimus Dexter. I was too much agitated 
to be able to speak to him.
My utmost expectations had not prepared me for the tone of absolute conviction 
in which he had spoken. At the best, I had anticipated that he might, by the 
barest chance, agree with me in suspecting Mrs. Beauly. And now his own lips had 
said it, without hesitation or reserve! "There isn't the shadow of a doubt: Mrs. 
Beauly poisoned her."
"Sit down," he said, quietly. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Nobody can hear 
us in this room."
I sat down again, and recovered myself a little.
"Have you never told any one else what you have just told me?" was the first 
question that I put to him.
"Never. No one else suspected her."
"Not even the lawyers?"
"Not even the lawyers. There is no legal evidence against Mrs. Beauly. There is 
nothing but moral certainty."
"Surely you might have found the evidence if you had tried?"
He laughed at the idea.
"Look at me!" he said. "How is a man to hunt up evidence who is tied to this 
chair? Besides, there were other difficulties in my way. I am not generally in 
the habit of needlessly betraying myself--I am a cautious man, though you may 
not have noticed it. But my immeasurable hatred of Mrs. Beauly was not to be 
concealed. If eyes can tell secrets, she must have discovered, in my eyes, that 
I hungered and thirsted to see her in the hangman's hands. From first to last, I 
tell you, Mrs. Borgia-Beauly was on her guard against me. Can I describe her 
cunning? All my resources of language are not equal to the task. Take the 
degrees of comparison to give you a faint idea of it: I am positively cunning; 
the devil is comparatively cunning; Mrs. Beauly is superlatively cunning. No! 
no! If she is ever discovered, at this distance of time, it will not be done by 
a man--it will be done by a woman: a woman whom she doesn't suspect; a woman who 
can watch her with the patience of a tigress in a state of starvation--"
"Say a woman like Me!" I broke out. "I am ready to try."
His eyes glittered; his teeth showed themselves viciously under his mustache; he 
drummed fiercely with both hands on the arms of his chair.
"Do you really mean it?" he asked.
"Put me in your position," I answered . "Enlighten me with your moral certainty 
(as you call it)--and you shall see!"
"I'll do it!" he said. "Tell me one thing first. How did an outside stranger, 
like you, come to suspect her?"
I set before him, to the best of my ability, the various elements of suspicion 
which I had collected from the evidence at the Trial; and I laid especial stress 
on the fact (sworn to by the nurse) that Mrs. Beauly was missing exactly at he 
time when Christina Ormsay had left Mrs. Eustace Macallan alone in her room.
"You have hit it!" cried Miserrimus Dexter. "You are a wonderful woman! What was 
she doing on the morning of the day when Mrs. Eustace Macallan died poisoned? 
And where was she during the dark hours of the night? I can tell you where she 
was not--she was not in her own room."
"Not in her own room?" I repeated. "Are you really sure of that?"
"I am sure of everything that I say, when I am speaking of Mrs. Beauly. Mind 
that: and now listen! This is a drama; and I excel in dramatic narrative. You 
shall judge for yourself. Date, the twentieth of October. Scene the Corridor, 
called the Guests' Corridor, at Gleninch. On one side, a row of windows looking 
out into the garden. On the other, a row of four bedrooms, with dressing-rooms 
attached. First bedroom (beginning from the staircase), occupied by Mrs. Beauly. 
Second bedroom, empty. Third bedroom, occupied by Miserrimus Dexter. Fourth 
bedroom, empty. So much for the Scene! The time comes next--the time is eleven 
at night. Dexter discovered in his bedroom, reading. Enter to him Eustace 
Macallan. Eustace speaks: 'My dear fellow, be particularly careful not to make 
any noise; don't bowl your chair up and down the corridor to-night.' Dexter 
inquires, 'Why?' Eustace answers: 'Mrs. Beauly has been dining with some friends 
in Edinburgh, and has come back terribly fatigued: she has gone up to her room 
to rest.' Dexter makes another inquiry (satirical inquiry, this time): 'How does 
she look when she is terribly fatigued? As beautiful as ever?' Answer: 'I don t 
know; I have not seen her; she slipped upstairs, without speaking to anybody.' 
Third inquiry by Dexter (logical inquiry, on this occasion): 'If she spoke to 
nobody, how do you know she is fatigued?' Eustace hands Dexter a morsel of 
paper, and answers: 'Don t be a fool! I found this on the hall table. Remember 
what I have told you about keeping quiet; good-night!' Eustace retires. Dexter 
looks at the paper, and reads these lines in pencil: 'Just returned. Please 
forgive me for going to bed without saying good-night. I have overexerted 
myself; I am dreadfully fatigued. (Signed) Helena.' Dexter is by nature 
suspicious. Dexter suspects Mrs. Beauly. Never mind his reasons; there is no 
time to enter into his reasons now. He puts the ease to himself thus: 'A weary 
woman would never have given herself the trouble to write this. She would have 
found it much less fatiguing to knock at the drawing-room door as she passed, 
and to make her apologies by word of mouth. I see something here out of the 
ordinary way; I shall make a night of it in my chair. Very good. Dexter proceeds 
to make a night of it. He opens his door; wheels himself softly into the 
corridor; locks the doors of the two empty bedrooms, and returns (with the keys 
in his pocket) to his own room. 'Now,' says D. to himself, 'if I hear a door 
softly opened in this part of the house, I shall know for certain it is Mrs. 
Beauly's door!' Upon that he closes his own door, leaving the tiniest little 
chink to look through; puts out his light; and waits and watches at his tiny 
little chink, like a cat at a mouse-hole. The corridor is the only place he 
wants to see; and a lamp burns there all night. Twelve o'clock strikes; he hears 
the doors below bolted and locked, and nothing happens. Half-past twelve--and 
nothing still. The house is as silent as the grave. One o'clock; two 
o'clock--same silence. Half-past two--and something happens at last. Dexter 
hears a sound close by, in the corridor. It is the sound of a handle turning 
very softly in a door--in the only door that can be opened, the door of Mrs. 
Beauly's room. Dexter drops noiselessly from his chair onto his hands; lies flat 
on the floor at his chink, and listens. He hears the handle closed again; he 
sees a dark object flit by him; he pops his head out of his door, down on the 
floor where nobody would think of looking for him. And what does he see? Mrs. 
Beauly! There she goes, with the long brown cloak over her shoulders, which she 
wears when she is driving, floating behind her. In a moment more she disappears, 
past the fourth bedroom, and turns at a right angle, into a second corridor, 
called the South Corridor. What rooms are in the South Corridor? There are three 
rooms. First room, the little study, mentioned in the nurse's evidence. Second 
room, Mrs. Eustace Macallan's bedchamber. Third room, her husband's bedchamber. 
What does Mrs. Beauly (supposed to be worn out by fatigue) want in that part of 
the house at half-past two in the morning? Dexter decides on running the risk of 
being seen--and sets off on a voyage of discovery. Do you know how he gets from 
place to place without his chair? Have you seen the poor deformed creature hop 
on his hands? Shall he show you how he does it, before he goes on with his 
story?"
I hastened to stop the proposed exhibition.
"I saw you hop last night," I said. "Go on!--pray go on with your story!
"Do you like my dramatic style of narrative?" he asked. "Am I interesting?"
"Indescribably interesting, Mr. Dexter. I am eager to hear more."
He smiled in high approval of his own abilities.
"I am equally good at the autobiographical style," he said. "Shall we try that 
next, by way of variety?"
"Anything you like," I cried, losing all patience with him, "if you will only go 
on!"
"Part Two; Autobiographical Style," he announced, with a wave of his hand. "I 
hopped along the Guests' Corridor, and turned into the South Corridor. I stopped 
at the little study. Door open; nobody there. I crossed the study to the second 
door, communicating with Mrs. Macallan's bedchamber. Locked! I looked through 
the keyhole Was there something hanging over it, on the other side? I can't 
say--I only know there was nothing to be seen but blank darkness. I listened. 
Nothing to be heard. Same blank darkness, same absolute silence, inside the 
locked second door of Mrs. Eustace's room, opening on the corridor. I went on to 
her husband's bedchamber. I had the worst possible opinion of Mrs. Beauly--I 
should not have been in the least surprised if I had caught her in Eustace's 
room. I looked through the keyhole. In this case, the key was out of it--or was 
turned the right way for me--I don't know which. Eustace's bed was opposite the 
door. No discovery. I could see him, all by himself, innocently asleep. I 
reflected a little. The back staircase was at the end of the corridor, beyond 
me. I slid down the stairs, and looked about me on the lower floor, by the light 
of the night-lamp. Doors all fast locked and keys outside, so that I could try 
them myself. House door barred and bolted. Door leading into the servants' 
offices barred and bolted. I got back to my own room, and thought it out 
quietly. Where could she be? Certainly in the house, somewhere. Where? I had 
made sure of the other rooms; the field of search was exhausted. She could only 
be in Mrs. Macallan's room--the one room which had baffled my investigations; 
the only room which had not lent itself to examination. Add to this that the key 
of the door in the study, communicating with Mrs. Macallan's room, was stated in 
the nurse's evidence to be missing; and don't forget that the dearest object of 
Mrs. Beauly's life (on the showing of her own letter, read at the Trial) was to 
be Eustace Macallan's happy wife. Put these things together in your own mind, 
and you will know what my thoughts were, as I sat waiting for events in my 
chair, without my telling you. Toward four o'clock, strong as I am, fatigue got 
the better of me. I fell asleep. Not for long. I awoke with a start and looked 
at my watch. Twenty-five minutes past four. Had she got back to her room while I 
was asleep? I hopped to her door and listened. Not a sound. I softly opened the 
door. The room was empty. I went back again to my own room to wait and watch. It 
was hard work to keep my eyes open. I drew up the window to let the cool air 
refresh me; I fought hard with exhausted nature, and exhausted nature won. I 
fell asleep again. This time it was eight in the morning when I awoke. I have 
goodish ears, as you may have noticed. I heard women's voices talking under my 
open window. I peeped out. Mrs. Beauly and her maid in close confabulation! Mrs. 
Beauly and her maid looking guiltily about them to make sure that they were 
neither seen nor heard! 'Take care, ma'am,' I heard the maid say; 'that horrid 
deformed monster is as sly as a fox. Mind he doesn't discover you.' Mrs. Beauly 
answered, 'You go first, and look out in front; I will follow you, and make sure 
there is nobody behind us.' With that they disappeared around the corner of the 
house. In five minutes more I heard the door of Mrs. Beauly's room softly opened 
and closed again. Three hours later the nurse met her in the corridor, 
innocently on her way to make inquiries at Mrs. Eustace Macallan's door. What do 
you think of these circumstances? What do you think of Mrs. Beauly and her maid 
having something to say to each other, which they didn't dare say in the 
house--for fear of my being behind some door listening to them? What do you 
think of these discoveries of mine being made on the very morning when Mrs. 
Eustace was taken ill--on the very day when she died by a poisoner's hand? Do 
you see your way to the guilty person? And has mad Miserrimus Dexter been of 
some assistance to you, so far?"
I was too violently excited to answer him. The way to the vindication of my 
husband's innocence was opened to me at last!
"Where is she?" I cried. "And where is that servant who is in her confidence?"
"I can't tell you," he said. "I don't know."
"Where can I inquire? Can you tell me that?"
He considered a little. "There is one man who must know where she is--or who 
could find it out for you," he said.
"Who is he? What is his name?"
"He is a friend of Eustace's. Major Fitz-David."
"I know him! I am going to dine with him next week. He has asked you to dine 
too."
Miserrimus Dexter laughed contemptuously.
"Major Fitz-David may do very well for the ladies," he said. "The ladies can 
treat him as a species of elderly human lap-dog. I don t dine with lap-dogs; I 
have said, No. You go. He or some of his ladies may be of use to you. Who are 
the guests? Did he tell you?"
"There was a French lady whose name I forget," I said, "and Lady Clarinda--"
"That will do! She is a friend of Mrs. Beauly's. She is sure to know where Mrs. 
Beauly is. Come to me the moment you have got your information. Find out if the 
maid is with her: she is the easiest to deal with of the two. Only make the maid 
open her lips, and we have got Mrs. Beauly. We crush her," he cried, bringing 
his hand down like lightning on the last languid fly of the season, crawling 
over the arm of his chair--"we crush her as I crush this fly. Stop! A 
question--a most important question in dealing with the maid. Have you got any 
money?"
"Plenty of money."
He snapped his fingers joyously.
"The maid is ours!" he cried. "It's a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence 
with the maid. Wait! Another question. About your name? If you approach Mrs. 
Beauly in your own character as Eustace's wife, you approach her as the woman 
who has taken her place--you make a mortal enemy of her at starting. Beware of 
that!"
My jealousy of Mrs. Beauly, smoldering in me all through the interview, burst 
into flames at those words. I could resist it no longer--I was obliged to ask 
him if my husband had ever loved her.
"Tell me the truth," I said. "Did Eustace really--?"
He burst out laughing maliciously, he penetrated my jealousy, and guessed my 
question almost before it had passed my lips.
"Yes," he said, "Eustace did really love her--and no mistake about it. She had 
every reason to believe (before the Trial) that the wife's death would put her 
in the wife's place. But the Trial made another man of Eustace. Mrs. Beauly had 
been a witness of the public degradation of him. That was enough to prevent his 
marrying Mrs. Beauly. He broke off with her at once and forever--for the same 
reason precisely which has led him to separate himself from you. Existence with 
a woman who knew that he had been tried for his life as a murderer was an 
existence that he was not hero enough to face. You wanted the truth. There it 
is! You have need to be cautious of Mrs. Beauly--you have no need to be jealous 
of her. Take the safe course. Arrange with the Major, when you meet Lady 
Clarinda at his dinner, that you meet her under an assumed name."
"I can go to the dinner," I said, "under the name in which Eustace married me. I 
can go as 'Mrs. Woodville.'"
"The very thing!" he exclaimed. "What would I not give to be present when Lady 
Clarinda introduces you to Mrs. Beauly! Think of the situation. A woman with a 
hideous secret hidden in her inmost soul: and another woman who knows of 
it--another woman who is bent, by fair means or foul, on dragging that secret 
into the light of day. What a struggle! What a plot for a novel! I am in a fever 
when I think of it. I am beside myself when I look into the future, and see Mrs. 
Borgia-Beauly brought to her knees at last. Don't be alarmed!" he cried, with 
the wild light flashing once more in his eyes. "My brains are beginning to boil 
again in my head. I must take refuge in physical exercise. I must blow off the 
steam, or I shall explode in my pink jacket on the spot!"
The old madness seized on him again. I made for the door, to secure my retreat 
in case of necessity--and then ventured to look around at him.
He was off on his furious wheels--half man, half chair--flying like a whirlwind 
to the other end of the room. Even this exercise was not violent enough for him 
in his present mood. In an instant he was down on the floor, poised on his 
hands, and looking in the distance like a monstrous frog. Hopping down the room, 
he overthrew, one after another, all the smaller and lighter chairs as he passed 
them; arrived at the end, he turned, surveyed the prostrate chairs, encouraged 
himself with a scream of triumph, and leaped rapidly over chair after chair on 
his hands--his limbless body now thrown back from the shoulders, and now thrown 
forward to keep the balance--in a manner at once wonderful and horrible to 
behold. "Dexter's Leap-frog!" he cried, cheerfully, perching himself with his 
birdlike lightness on the last of the prostrate chairs when he had reached the 
further end of the room. "I'm pretty active, Mrs. Valeria, considering I'm a 
cripple. Let us drink to the hanging of Mrs. Beauly in another bottle of 
Burgundy!"
I seized desperately on the first excuse that occurred to me for getting away 
from him.
"You forget," I said--"I must go at once to the Major. If I don't warn him in 
time, he may speak of me to Lady Clarinda by the wrong name."
Ideas of hurry and movement were just the ideas to take his fancy in his present 
state. He blew furiously on the whistle that summoned Ariel from the kitchen 
regions, and danced up and down on his hands in the full frenzy of his delight.
"Ariel shall get you a cab!" he cried. "Drive at a gallop to the Major's. Set 
the trap for her without losing a moment. Oh, what a day of days this has been! 
Oh, what a relief to get rid of my dreadful secret, and share it with You! I am 
suffocating with happiness--I am like the Spirit of the Earth in Shelley's 
poem." He broke out with the magnificent lines in "Prometheus Unbound," in which 
the Earth feels the Spirit of Love, and bursts into speech. "'The joy, the 
triumph, the delight, the madness! the boundless, overflowing, bursting 
gladness! the vaporous exultation not to be confined! Ha! ha! the animation of 
delight, which wraps me like an atmosphere of light, and bears me as a cloud is 
borne by its own wind.' That's how I feel, Valeria!--that's how I feel!"
I crossed the threshold while he was still speaking. The last I saw of him he 
was pouring out that glorious flood of words--his deformed body, poised on the 
overthrown chair, his face lifted in rapture to some fantastic heaven of his own 
making. I slipped out softly into the antechamber. Even as I crossed the room, 
he changed once more. I heard his ringing cry; I heard the soft thump-thump of 
his hands on the floor. He was going down the room again, in "Dexter's 
Leap-frog," flying over the prostrate chairs.
In the hall, Ariel was on the watch for me.
As I approached her, I happened to be putting on my gloves. She stopped me; and, 
taking my right arm, lifted my hand toward her face. Was she going to kiss it? 
or to bite it?" Neither. She smelt it like a dog--and dropped it again with a 
hoarse chuckling laugh.
"You don't smell of his perfumes," she said. "You haven't touched his beard. Now 
I believe you. Want a cab?"
"Thank you. I'll walk till I meet a cab."
She was bent on being polite to me--now I had not touched his beard.
"I say!" she burst out, in her deepest notes.
"Yes?"
"I'm glad I didn't upset you in the canal. There now!"
She gave me a friendly smack on the shoulder which nearly knocked me 
down--relapsed, the instant after, into her leaden stolidity of look and 
manner---and led the way out by the front door. I heard her hoarse chuckling 
laugh as she locked the gate behind me. My star was at last in the ascendant! In 
one and the same day I had found my way into the confidence of Ariel and Ariel's 
master.



CHAPTER XXXI.
THE DEFENSE OF MRS. BEAULY.



THE days that elapsed before Major Fitz-David's dinner-party were precious days 
to me.
My long interview with Miserrimus Dexter had disturbed me far more seriously 
than I suspected at the time. It was not until some hours after I had left him 
that I really began to feel how my nerves had been tried by all that I had seen 
and heard during my visit at his house. I started at the slightest noises; I 
dreamed of dreadful things; I was ready to cry without reason at one moment, and 
to fly into a passion without reason at another. Absolute rest was what I 
wanted, and (thanks to my good Benjamin) was what I got. The dear old man 
controlled his anxieties on my account, and spared me the questions which his 
fatherly interest in my welfare made him eager to ask. It was tacitly understood 
between us that all conversation on the subject of my visit to Miserrimus Dexter 
(of which, it is needless to say, he strongly disapproved) should be deferred 
until repose had restored my energies of body and mind. I saw no visitors. Mrs. 
Macallan came to the cottage, and Major Fitz-David came to the cottage--one of 
them to hear what had passed between Miserrimus Dexter and myself, the other to 
amuse me with the latest gossip about the guests at the forthcoming dinner. 
Benjamin took it on himself to make my apologies, and to spare me the exertion 
of receiving my visitors. We hired a little open carriage, and took long drives 
in the pretty country lanes still left flourishing within a few miles of the 
northern suburb of London. At home we sat and talked quietly of old times, or 
played at backgammon and dominoes--and so, for a few happy days, led the 
peaceful unadventurous life which was good for me. When the day of the dinner 
arrived, I felt restored to my customary health. I was ready again, and eager 
again, for the introduction to Lady Clarinda and the discovery of Mrs. Beauly.
Benjamin looked a little sadly at my flushed face as we drove to Major 
Fitz-David's house.
"Ah, my dear," he said, in his simple way, "I see you are well again! You have 
had enough of our quiet life already."
My recollection of events and persons, in general, at the dinner-party, is 
singularly indistinct.
I remember that we were very merry, and as easy and familiar with one another as 
if we had been old friends. I remember that Madame Mirliflore was unapproachably 
superior to the other women present, in the perfect beauty of her dress, and in 
the ample justice which she did to the luxurious dinner set before us. I 
remember the Major's young prima donna, more round-eyed, more overdressed, more 
shrill and strident as the coming "Queen of Song," than ever. I remember the 
Major himself, always kissing our hands, always luring us to indulge in dainty 
dishes and drinks, always making love, always detecting resemblances between us, 
always "under the charm," and never once out of his character as elderly Don 
Juan from the beginning of the evening to the end. I remember dear old Benjamin, 
completely bewildered, shrinking into corners, blushing when he was personally 
drawn into the conversation, frightened at Madame Mirliflore, bashful with Lady 
Clarinda, submissive to the Major, suffering under the music, and from the 
bottom of his honest old heart wishing himself home again. And there, as to the 
members of that cheerful little gathering, my memory finds its limits--with one 
exception. The appearance of Lady Clarinda is as present to me as if I had met 
her yesterday; and of the memorable conversation which we two held together 
privately, toward the close of the evening, it is no exaggeration to say that I 
can still call to mind almost every word.
I see her dress, I hear her voice again, while I write.
She was attired, I remember, with that extreme assumption of simplicity which 
always defeats its own end by irresistibly suggesting art. She wore plain white 
muslin, over white silk, without trimming or ornament of any kind. Her rich 
brown hair, dressed in defiance of the prevailing fashion, was thrown back from 
her forehead, and gathered into a simple knot behind--without adornment of any 
sort. A little white ribbon encircled her neck, fastened by the only article of 
jewelry that she wore--a tiny diamond brooch. She was unquestionably handsome; 
but her beauty was of the somewhat hard and angular type which is so often seen 
in English women of her race: the nose and chin too prominent and too firmly 
shaped; the well-opened gray eyes full of spirit and dignity, but wanting in 
tenderness and mobility of expression. Her manner had all the charm which fine 
breeding can confer--exquisitely polite, easily cordial; showing that perfect 
yet unobtrusive confidence in herself which (in England) seems to be the natural 
outgrowth of pre-eminent social rank. If you had accepted her for what she was, 
on the surface, you would have said, Here is the model of a noble woman who is 
perfectly free from pride. And if you had taken a liberty with her, on the 
strength of that conviction, she would have made you remember it to the end of 
your life.
We got on together admirably. I was introduced as "Mrs. Woodville," by previous 
arrangement with the Major--effected through Benjamin. Before the dinner was 
over we had promised to exchange visits. Nothing but the opportunity was wanting 
to lead Lady Clarinda into talking, as I wanted her to talk, of Mrs. Beauly.
Late in the evening the opportunity came.
I had taken refuge from the terrible bravura singing of the Major's strident 
prima donna in the back drawing-room. As I had hoped and anticipated, after a 
while Lady Clarinda (missing me from the group around the piano) came in search 
of me. She seated herself by my side, out of sight and out of hearing of our 
friends in the front room; and, to my infinite relief and delight, touched on 
the subject of Miserrimus Dexter of her own accord. Something I had said of him, 
when his name had been accidentally mentioned at dinner, remained in her memory, 
and led us, by perfectly natural gradations, into speaking of Mrs. Beauly. "At 
last," I thought to myself, "the Major's little dinner will bring me my reward!"
And what a reward it was, when it came! My heart sinks in me again--as it sank 
on that never-to-be-forgotten evening--while I sit at my desk thinking of it.



"So Dexter really spoke to you of Mrs. Beauly!" exclaimed Lady Clarinda. "You 
have no idea how you surprise me."
"May I ask why?"
"He hates her! The last time I saw him he wouldn't allow me to mention her name. 
It is one of his innumerable oddities. If any such feeling as sympathy is a 
possible feeling in such a nature as his, he ought to like Helena Beauly. She is 
the most completely unconventional person I know. When she does break out, poor 
dear, she says things and does things which are almost reckless enough to be 
worthy of Dexter himself. I wonder whether you would like her?"
"You have kindly asked me to visit you, Lady Clarinda. Perhaps I may meet her at 
your house?"
"I hope you will not wait until that is likely to happen," she said. "Helena's 
last whim is to fancy that she has got--the gout, of all the maladies in the 
world! She is away at some wonderful baths in Hungary or Bohemia (I don't 
remember which)--and where she will go, or what she will do next, it is 
perfectly impossible to say.--Dear Mrs. Woodville! is the heat of the fire too 
much for you? You are looking quite pale."
I felt that I was looking pale. The discovery of Mrs. Beauly's absence from 
England was a shock for which I was quite unprepared. For a moment it unnerved 
me.
"Shall we go into the other room?" asked Lady Clarinda.
To go into the other room would be to drop the conversation. I was determined 
not to let that catastrophe happen. It was just possible that Mrs. Beauly's maid 
might have quitted her service, or might have been left behind in England. My 
information would not be complete until I knew what had become of the maid. I 
pushed my chair back a little from the fire-place, and took a hand-screen from a 
table near me; it might be made useful in hiding my face, if any more 
disappointments were in store for me.
"Thank you, Lady Clarinda; I was only a little too near the fire. I shall do 
admirably here. You surprise me about Mrs. Beauly. From what Mr. Dexter said to 
me, I had imagined--"
"Oh, you must not believe anything Dexter tells you!" interposed Lady Clarinda. 
"He delights in mystifying people; and he purposely misled you, I have no doubt. 
If all that I hear is true, he ought to know more of Helena Beauly's strange 
freaks and fancies than most people. He all but discovered her in one of her 
adventures (down in Scotland), which reminds me of the story in Auber's charming 
opera--what is it called? I shall forget my own name next! I mean the opera in 
which the two nuns slip out of the convent, and go to the ball. Listen! How very 
odd! That vulgar girl is singing the castanet song in the second act at this 
moment. Major! what opera is the young lady singing from?"
The Major was scandalized at this interruption. He bustled into the back 
room--whispered, "Hush! hush! my dear lady; the 'Domino Noir'"--and bustled back 
again to the piano.
"Of course!" said Lady Clarinda. "How stupid of me! The 'Domino Noir.' And how 
strange that you should forget it too!"
I had remembered it perfectly; but I could not trust myself to speak. If, as I 
believed, the "adventure" mentioned by Lady Clarinda was connected, in some way, 
with Mrs. Beauly's mysterious proceedings on the morning of the twenty-first of 
October, I was on the brink of the very discovery which it was the one interest 
of my life to make! I held the screen so as to hide my face; and I said, in the 
steadiest voice that I could command at the moment,
"Pray go on!--pray tell me what the adventure was!"
Lady Clarinda was quite flattered by my eager desire to hear the coming 
narrative.
"I hope my story will be worthy of the interest which you are so good as to feel 
in it, "she said. "If you only knew Helena--it is so like her! I have it, you 
must know, from her maid. She has taken a woman who speaks foreign languages 
with her to Hungary and she has left the maid with me. A perfect treasure! I 
should be only too glad if I could keep her in my service: she has but one 
defect, a name I hate--Phoebe. Well! Phoebe and her mistress were staying at a 
place near Edinburgh, called (I think) Gleninch. The house belonged to that Mr. 
Macallan who was afterward tried--you remember it, of course?--for poisoning his 
wife. A dreadful case; but don't be alarmed--my story has nothing to do with it; 
my story has to do with Helena Beauly. One evening (while she was staying at 
Gleninch) she was engaged to dine with some English friends visiting Edinburgh. 
The same night--also in Edinburgh--there was a masked ball, given by somebody 
whose name I forget. The ball (almost an unparalleled event in Scotland!) was 
reported to be not at all a reputable affair. All sorts of amusing people were 
to be there. Ladies of doubtful virtue, you know, and gentlemen on the outlying 
limits of society, and so on. Helena's friends had contrived to get cards, and 
were going, in spite of the objections--in the strictest incognito, of course, 
trusting to their masks. And Helena herself was bent on going with them, if she 
could only manage it without being discovered at Gleninch. Mr. Macallan was one 
of the strait-laced people who disapproved of the ball. No lady, he said, could 
show herself at such an entertainment without compromising her reputation. What 
stuff! Well, Helena, in one of her wildest moments, hit on a way of going to the 
ball without discovery which was really as ingenious as a plot in a French play. 
She went to the dinner in the carriage from Gleninch, having sent Phoebe to 
Edinburgh before her. It was not a grand dinner--a little friendly gathering: no 
evening dress. When the time came for going back to Gleninch, what do you think 
Helena did? She sent her maid back in the carriage, instead of herself! Phoebe 
was dressed in her mistress's cloak and bonnet and veil. She was instructed to 
run upstairs the moment she got to the house, leaving on the hall table a little 
note of apology (written by Helena, of course!), pleading fatigue as an excuse 
for not saying good-night to her host. The mistress and the maid were about the 
same height; and the servants naturally never discovered the trick. Phoebe got 
up to her mistress's room safely enough. There, her instructions were to wait 
until the house was quiet for the night, and then to steal up to her own room. 
While she was waiting, the girl fell asleep. She only awoke at two in the 
morning, or later. It didn't much matter, as she thought. She stole out on 
tiptoe, and closed the door behind her. Before she was at the end of the 
corridor, she fancied she heard something. She waited until she was safe on the 
upper story, and then she looked over the banisters. There was Dexter--so like 
him!--hopping about on his hands (did you ever see it? the most grotesquely 
horrible exhibition you can imagine!)--there was Dexter, hopping about, and 
looking through keyholes, evidently in search of the person who had left her 
room at two in the morning; and no doubt taking Phoebe for her mistress, seeing 
that she had forgotten to take her mistress's cloak off her shoulders. The next 
morning, early, Helena came back in a hired carriage from Edinburgh, with a hat 
and mantle borrowed from her English friends. She left the carriage in the road, 
and got into the house by way of the garden--without being discovered, this 
time, by Dexter or by anybody. Clever and daring, wasn't it? And, as I said just 
now, quite a new version of the 'Domino Noir.' You will wonder, as I did, how it 
was that Dexter didn't make mischief in the morning? He would have done it no 
doubt. But even he was silenced (as Phoebe told me) by the dreadful event that 
happened in the house on the same day. My dear Mrs. Woodville! the heat of this 
room is certainly too much for you, take my smelling-bottle. Let me open the 
window."
I was just able to answer, "Pray say nothing! Let me slip out into the open 
air!"
I made my way unobserved to the landing, and sat down on the stairs to compose 
myself where nobody could see me. In a moment more I felt a hand laid gently on 
my shoulder, and discovered good Benjamin looking at me in dismay. Lady Clarinda 
had considerately spoken to him, and had assisted him in quietly making his 
retreat from the room, while his host's attention was still absorbed by the 
music.
"My dear child!" he whispered, "what is the matter?"
"Take me home, and I will tell you," was all that I could say.



CHAPTER XXXII.
A SPECIMEN OF MY WISDOM.



THE scene must follow my erratic movements--the scene must close on London for a 
while, and open in Edinburgh. Two days had passed since Major Fitz-David's 
dinner-party. I was able to breathe again freely, after the utter destruction of 
all my plans for the future, and of all the hopes that I had founded on them. I 
could now see that I had been trebly in the wrong--wrong in hastily and cruelly 
suspecting an innocent woman; wrong in communicating my suspicions (without an 
attempt to verify them previously) to another person; wrong in accepting the 
flighty inferences and conclusions of Miserrimus Dexter as if they had been 
solid truths. I was so ashamed of my folly, when I thought of the past--so 
completely discouraged, so rudely shaken in my confidence in myself, when I 
thought of the future, that, for once in a way, I accepted sensible advice when 
it was offered to me. "My dear," said good old Benjamin, after we had thoroughly 
talked over my discomfiture on our return from the dinner-party, "judging by 
what you tell me of him, I don't fancy Mr. Dexter. Promise me that you will not 
go back to him until you have first consulted some person who is fitter to guide 
you through this dangerous business than I am.
I gave him my promise, on one condition. "If I fail to find the person," I said, 
"will you undertake to help me?"
Benjamin pledged himself to help me, cheerfully.
The next morning, when I was brushing my hair, and thinking over my affairs, I 
called to mind a forgotten resolution of mine at the time I first read the 
Report of my husband's Trial. I mean the resolution--if Miserrimus Dexter failed 
me--to apply to one of the two agents (or solicitors, as we should term them) 
who had prepared Eustace's defense--namely, Mr. Playmore. This gentleman, it may 
be remembered, had especially recommended himself to my confidence by his 
friendly interference when the sheriff's officers were in search of my husband's 
papers. Referring back to the evidence Of "Isaiah Schoolcraft," I found that Mr. 
Playmore had been called in to assist and advise Eustace by Miserrimus Dexter. 
He was therefore not only a friend on whom I might rely, but a friend who was 
personally acquainted with Dexter as well. Could there be a fitter man to apply 
to for enlightenment in the darkness that had now gathered around me? Benjamin, 
when I put the question to him, acknowledged that I had made a sensible choice 
on this occasion, and at once exerted himself to help me. He discovered (through 
his own lawyer) the address of Mr. Playmore's London agents; and from these 
gentlemen he obtained for me a letter of introduction to Mr. Playmore himself. I 
had nothing to conceal from my new adviser; and I was properly described in the 
letter as Eustace Macallan's second wife.
The same evening we two set forth (Benjamin refused to let me travel alone) by 
the night mail for Edinburgh.
I had previously written to Miserrimus Dexter (by my old friend's advice), 
merely saying that I had been unexpectedly called away from London for a few 
days, and that I would report to him the result of my interview with Lady 
Clarinda on my return. A characteristic answer was brought back to the cottage 
by Ariel: "Mrs. Valeria, I happen to be a man of quick perceptions; and I can 
read the unwritten part of your letter. Lady Clarinda has shaken your confidence 
in me. Very good. I pledge myself to shake your confidence in Lady Clarinda. In 
the meantime I am not offended. In serene composure I await the honor and the 
happiness of your visit. Send me word by telegraph whether you would like 
Truffles again, or whether you would prefer something simpler and lighter--say 
that incomparable French dish, Pig's Eyelids and Tamarinds. Believe me always 
your ally and admirer, your poet and cook--DEXTER."
Arrived in Edinburgh, Benjamin and I had a little discussion. The question in 
dispute between us was whether I should go with him, or go alone, to Mr. 
Playmore. I was all for going alone.
"My experience of the world is not a very large one," I said. "But I have 
observed that, in nine cases out of ten, a man will make concessions to a woman, 
if she approaches him by her self, which he would hesitate even to consider if 
another man was within hearing. I don't know how it is--I only know that it is 
so; If I find that I get on badly with Mr. Playmore, I will ask him for a second 
appointment, and, in that case, you shall accompany me. Don't think me 
self-willed. Let me try my luck alone, and let us see what comes of it."
Benjamin yielded, with his customary consideration for me. I sent my letter of 
introduction to Mr. Playmore's office--his private house being in the 
neighborhood of Gleninch. My messenger brought back a polite answer, inviting me 
to visit him at an early hour in the afternoon. At the appointed time, to the 
moment, I rang the bell at the office door.



CHAPTER XXXIII.
A SPECIMEN OF MY FOLLY.



THE incomprehensible submission of Scotchmen to the ecclesiastical tyranny of 
their Established Church has produced--not unnaturally, as I think--a very 
mistaken impression of the national character in the popular mind.
Public opinion looks at the institution of "The Sabbath" in Scotland; finds it 
unparalleled in Christendom for its senseless and savage austerity; sees a 
nation content to be deprived by its priesthood of every social privilege on one 
day in every week--forbidden to travel; forbidden to telegraph; forbidden to eat 
a hot dinner; forbidden to read a newspaper; in short, allowed the use of two 
liberties only, the liberty of exhibiting one's self at the Church and the 
liberty of secluding one's self over the bottle--public opinion sees this, and 
arrives at the not unreasonable conclusion that the people who submit to such 
social laws as these are the most stolid, stern and joyless people on the face 
of the earth. Such are Scotchmen supposed to be, when viewed at a distance. But 
how do Scotchmen appear when they are seen under a closer light, and judged by 
the test of personal experience? There are no people more cheerful, more 
companionable, more hospitable, more liberal in their ideas, to be found on the 
face of the civilized globe than the very people who submit to the Scotch 
Sunday! On the six days of the week there is an atmosphere of quiet humor, a 
radiation of genial common-sense, about Scotchmen in general, which is simply 
delightful to feel. But on the seventh day these same men will hear one of their 
ministers seriously tell them that he views taking a walk on the Sabbath in the 
light of an act of profanity, and will be the only people in existence who can 
let a man talk downright nonsense without laughing at him.
I am not clever enough to be able to account for this anomaly in the national 
character; I can only notice it by way of necessary preparation for the 
appearance in my little narrative of a personage not frequently seen in 
writing--a cheerful Scotchman.
In all other respects I found Mr. Playmore only negatively remarkable. He was 
neither old nor young, neither handsome nor ugly; he was personally not in the 
least like the popular idea of a lawyer; and he spoke perfectly good English, 
touched with only the slightest possible flavor of a Scotch accent.
"I have the honor to be an old friend of Mr. Macallan," he said, cordially 
shaking hands with me; "and I am honestly happy to become acquainted with Mr. 
Macallan's wife. Where will you sit? Near the light? You are young enough not to 
be afraid of the daylight just yet. Is this your first visit to Edinburgh? Pray 
let me make it as pleasant to you as I can. I shall be delighted to present Mrs. 
Playmore to you. We are staying in Edinburgh for a little while. The Italian 
opera is here, and we have a box for to-night. Will you kindly waive all 
ceremony and dine with us and go to the music afterward?"
"You are very kind," I answered. "But I have some anxieties just now which will 
make me a very poor companion for Mrs. Playmore at the opera. My letter to you 
mentions, I think, that I have to ask your advice on matters which are of very 
serious importance to me."
"Does it?" he rejoined. "To tell you the truth, I have not read the letter 
through. I saw your name in it, and I gathered from your message that you wished 
to see me here. I sent my note to your hotel--and then went on with something 
else. Pray pardon me. Is this a professional consultation? For your own sake, I 
sincerely hope not!"
"It is hardly a professional consultation, Mr. Playmore. I find myself in a very 
painful position; and I come to you to advise me, under very unusual 
circumstances. I shall surprise you very much when you hear what I have to say; 
and I am afraid I shall occupy more than my fair share of your time."
"I and my time are entirely at your disposal," he said. "Tell me what I can do 
for you--and tell it in your own way."
The kindness of this language was more than matched by the kindness of his 
manner. I spoke to him freely and fully--I told him my strange story without the 
slightest reserve.
He showed the varying impressions that I produced on his mind without the 
slightest concealment. My separation from Eustace distressed him. My resolution 
to dispute the Scotch Verdict, and my unjust suspicions of Mrs. Beauly, first 
amused, then surprised him. It was not, however, until I had described my 
extraordinary interview with Miserrimus Dexter, and my hardly less remarkable 
conversation with Lady Clarinda, that I produced my greatest effect on the 
lawyer's mind. I saw him change color for the first time. He started, and 
muttered to himself, as if he had completely forgotten me. "Good God!" I heard 
him say--"can it be possible? Does the truth lie that way after all?"
I took the liberty of interrupting him. I had no idea of allowing him to keep 
his thoughts to himself.
"I seem to have surprised you?" I said.
He started at the sound of my voice.
"I beg ten thousand pardons!" he exclaimed. "You have not only surprised me--you 
have opened an entirely new view to my mind. I see a possibility, a really 
startling possibility, in connection with the poisoning at Gleninch, which never 
occurred to me until the present moment. This is a nice state of things," he 
added, falling back again into his ordinary humor. "Here is the client leading 
the lawyer. My dear Mrs. Eustace, which is it--do you want my advice? or do I 
want yours?"
"May I hear the new idea?" I asked.
"Not just yet, if you will excuse me," he answered. "Make allowances for my 
professional caution. I don't want to be professional with you--my great anxiety 
is to avoid it. But the lawyer gets the better of the man, and refuses to be 
suppressed. I really hesitate to realize what is passing in my own mind without 
some further inquiry. Do me a great favor. Let us go over a part of the ground 
again, and let me ask you some questions as we proceed. Do you feel any 
objection to obliging me in this matter?"
"Certainly not, Mr. Playmore. How far shall we go back?"
"To your visit to Dexter with your mother-in-law. When you first asked him if he 
had any ideas of his own on the subject of Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death, did I 
understand you to say that he looked at you suspiciously?"
"Very suspiciously."
"And his face cleared up again when you told him that your question was only 
suggested by what you had read in the Report of the Trial?"
"Yes."
He drew a slip of paper out of the drawer in his desk, dipped his pen in the 
ink, considered a little, and placed a chair for me close at his side.
"The lawyer disappears," he said, "and the man resumes his proper place. There 
shall be no professional mysteries between you and me. As your husband's old 
friend, Mrs. Eustace, I feel no common interest in you. I see a serious 
necessity for warning you before it is too late; and I can only do so to any 
good purpose by running a risk on which few men in my place would venture. 
Personally and professionally, I am going to trust you--though I am a Scotchman 
and a lawyer. Sit here, and look over my shoulder while I make my notes. You 
will see what is passing in my mind if you see what I write."
I sat down by him, and looked over his shoulder, without the smallest pretense 
of hesitation.
He began to write as follows:
"The poisoning at Gleninch. Queries: In what position does Miserrimus Dexter 
stand toward the poisoning? And what does he (presumably) know about that 
matter?
"He has ideas which are secrets. He suspects that he has betrayed them, or that 
they have been discovered in some way inconceivable to himself. He is palpably 
relieved when he finds that this is not the case."
The pen stopped; and the questions went on.
"Let us advance to your second visit," said Mr. Playmore, "when you saw Dexter 
alone. Tell me again what he did, and how he looked when you informed him that 
you were not satisfied with the Scotch Verdict."
I repeated what I have already written in these pages. The pen went back to the 
paper again, and added these lines:
"He hears nothing more remarkable than that a person visiting him, who is 
interested in the case, refuses to accept the verdict at the Macallan Trial as a 
final verdict, and proposes to reopen the inquiry. What does he do upon that?
"He exhibits all the symptoms of a panic of terror; he sees himself in some 
incomprehensible danger; he is frantic at one moment and servile at the next; he 
must and will know what this disturbing person really means. And when he is 
informed on that point, he first turns pale and doubts the evidence of his own 
senses; and next, with nothing said to justify it, gratuitously accuses his 
visitor of suspecting somebody. Query here: When a small sum of money is missing 
in a household, and the servants in general are called together to be informed 
of the circumstance, what do we think of the one servant in particular who 
speaks first, and who says, 'Do you suspect me?'"
He laid down the pen again. "Is that right?" he asked.
I began to see the end to which the notes were drifting. Instead of answering 
his question, I entreated him to enter into the explanations that were still 
wanting to convince my own mind. He held up a warning forefinger, and stopped 
me.
"Not yet," he said. "Once again, am I right--so far?"
"Quite right."
"Very well. Now tell me what happened next. Don't mind repeating yourself. Give 
me all the details, one after another, to the end."
I mentioned all the details exactly as I remembered them. Mr. Playmore returned 
to his writing for the third and last time. Thus the notes ended:
"He is indirectly assured that he at least is not the person suspected. He sinks 
back in his chair; he draws a long breath; he asks to be left a while by 
himself, under the pretense that the subject excites him. When the visitor 
returns, Dexter has been drinking in the interval. The visitor resumes the 
subject--not Dexter. The visitor is convinced that Mrs. Eustace Macallan died by 
the hand of a poisoner, and openly says so. Dexter sinks back in his chair like 
a man fainting. What is the horror that has got possession of him? It is easy to 
understand if we call it guilty horror; it is beyond all understanding if we 
call it anything else. And how does it leave him? He flies from one extreme, to 
another; he is indescribably delighted when he discovers that the visitor's 
suspicions are all fixed on an absent person. And then, and then only, he takes 
refuge in the declaration that he has been of one mind with his visitor, in the 
matter of suspicion, from the first. These are facts. To what plain conclusion 
do they point?"
He shut up his notes, and, steadily watching my face, waited for me to speak 
first.
"I understand you, Mr. Playmore," I beg impetuously. "You believe that Mr. 
Dexter--"
His warning forefinger stopped me there.
Tell me, "he interposed, "what Dexter said to you when he was so good as to 
confirm your opinion of poor Mrs. Beauly."
"He said, 'There isn't a doubt about it. Mrs. Beauly poisoned her.'"
"I can't do better than follow so good an example--with one trifling difference. 
I say too, There isn't a doubt about it. Dexter poisoned her.
"Are you joking, Mr. Playmore?"
"I never was more in earnest in my life. Your rash visit to Dexter, and your 
extraordinary imprudence in taking him into your confidence have led to 
astonishing results. The light which the whole machinery of the Law was unable 
to throw on the poisoning case at Gleninch has been accidentally let in on it by 
a Lady who refuses to listen to reason and who insists on having her own way. 
Quite incredible, and nevertheless quite true."
"Impossible!" I exclaimed.
"What is impossible?" he asked, coolly
"That Dexter poisoned my husband's first wife."
"And why is that impossible, if you please?" I began to be almost enraged with 
Mr. Playmore.
"Can you ask the question?" I replied, indignantly. "I have told you that I 
heard him speak of her in terms of respect and affection of which any woman 
might be proud. He lives in the memory of her. I owe his friendly reception of 
me to some resemblance which he fancies he sees between my figure and hers. I 
have seen tears in his eyes, I have heard his voice falter and fail him, when he 
spoke of her. He may be the falsest of men in all besides, but he is true to 
her--he has not misled me in that one thing. There are signs that never deceive 
a woman when a man is talking to her of what is really near his heart: I saw 
those signs. It is as true that I poisoned her as that he did. I am ashamed to 
set my opinion against yours, Mr. Playmore; but I really cannot help it. I 
declare I am almost angry with you."
He seemed to be pleased, instead of offended by the bold manner in which I 
expressed myself.
"My dear Mrs. Eustace, you have no reason to be angry with me. In one respect, I 
entirely share your view--with this difference, that I go a little further than 
you do."
"I don't understand you."
"You will understand me directly. You describe Dexter's feeling for the late 
Mrs. Eustace as a happy mixture of respect and affection. I can tell you it was 
a much warmer feeling toward her than that. I have my information from the poor 
lady herself--who honored me with her confidence and friendship for the best 
part of her life. Before she married Mr. Macallan--she kept it a secret from 
him, and you had better keep it a secret too--Miserrimus Dexter was in love with 
her. Miserrimus Dexter asked her--deformed as he was, seriously asked her--to be 
his wife."
"And in the face of that," I cried, "you say that he poisoned her!"
"I do. I see no other conclusion possible, after what happened during your visit 
to him. You all but frightened him into a fainting fit. What was he afraid of?"
I tried hard to find an answer to that. I even embarked on an answer without 
quite knowing where my own words might lead me.
Mr. Dexter is an old and true friend of my husband, I began. "When he heard me 
say I was not satisfied with the Verdict, he might have felt alarmed--"
"He might have felt alarmed at the possible consequences to your husband of 
reopening the inquiry," said Mr. Playmore, ironically finishing the sentence for 
me. "Rather far-fetched, Mrs. Eustace; and not very consistent with your faith 
in your husband's innocence. Clear your mind of one mistake," he continued, 
seriously, "which may fatally mislead you if you persist in pursuing your 
present course. Miserrimus Dexter, you may take my word for it, ceased to be 
your husband's friend on the day when your husband married his first wife. 
Dexter has kept up appearances, I grant you, both in public and in private. His 
evidence in his friend's favor at the Trial was given with the deep feeling 
which everybody expected from him. Nevertheless, I firmly believe, looking under 
the surface, that Mr. Macallan has no bitterer enemy living than Miserrimus 
Dexter."
He turned me cold. I felt that here, at least, he was right. My husband had 
wooed and won the woman who had refused Dexter's offer of marriage. Was Dexter 
the man to forgive that? My own experience answered me, and said, No. "Bear in 
mind what I have told you," Mr. Playmore proceeded. "And now let us get on to 
your own position in this matter, and to the interests that you have at stake. 
Try to adopt my point of view for the moment; and let us inquire what chance we 
have of making any further advance toward a discovery of the truth. It is one 
thing to be morally convinced (as I am) that Miserrimus Dexter is the man who 
ought to have been tried for the murder at Gleninch; and it is another thing, at 
this distance of time, to lay our hands on the plain evidence which can alone 
justify anything like a public assertion of his guilt. There, as I see it, is 
the insuperable difficulty in the case. Unless I am completely mistaken, the 
question is now narrowed to this plain issue: The public assertion of your 
husband's innocence depends entirely on the public assertion of Dexter's guilt. 
How are you to arrive at that result? There is not a particle of evidence 
against him. You can only convict Dexter on Dexter's own confession. Are you 
listening to me?"
I was listening, most unwillingly. If he were right, things had indeed come to 
that terrible pass. But I could not--with all my respect for his superior 
knowledge and experience--I could not persuade myself that he was right. And I 
owned it, with the humility which I really felt.
He smiled good-humoredly.
"At any rate," he said, "you will admit that Dexter has not freely opened his 
mind to you thus far? He is still keeping something from your knowledge which 
you are interested in discovering?"
"Yes. I admit that."
"Very good. What applies to your view of the case applies to mine. I say, he is 
keeping from you the confession of his guilt. You say, he is keeping from you 
information which may fasten the guilt on some other person. Let us start from 
that point. Confession, or information, how are you to get at what he is now 
withholding from you? What influence can you bring to bear on him when you see 
him again?"
"Surely I might persuade him?"
"Certainly. And if persuasion fail--what then? Do you think you can entrap him 
into speaking out? or terrify him into speaking out?"
"If you will look at your notes, Mr. Playmore, you will see that I have already 
succeeded in terrifying him--though I am only a woman and though I didn't mean 
to do it."
"Very well answered. You mark the trick. What you have done once you think you 
can do again. Well, as you are determined to try the experiment, it can do you 
no harm to know a little more of Dexter's character and temperament than you 
know now. Suppose we apply for information to somebody who can help us?"
I started, and looked round the room. He made me do it--he spoke as if the 
person who was to help us was close at our elbows.
"Don't be alarmed," he said. "The oracle is silent; and the oracle is here."
He unlocked one of the drawers of his desk; produced a bundle of letters, and 
picked out one.
"When we were arranging your husband's defense," he said, "we felt some 
difficulty about including Miserrimus Dexter among our witnesses. We had not the 
slightest suspicion of him, I need hardly tell you. But we were all afraid of 
his eccentricity; and some among us even feared that the excitement of appearing 
at the Trial might drive him completely out of his mind. In this emergency we 
applied to a doctor to help us. Under some pretext, which I forget now, we 
introduced him to Dexter. And in due course of time we received his report. Here 
it is."
He opened the letter, and marking a certain passage in it with a pencil, handed 
it to me.
"Read the lines which I have marked," he said; "they will be quite sufficient 
for our purpose."
I read these words:
"Summing up the results of my observation, I may give it as my opinion that 
there is undoubtedly latent insanity in this case, but that no active symptoms 
of madness have presented themselves as yet. You may, I think, produce him at 
the Trial, without fear of consequences. He may say and do all sorts of odd 
things; but he has his mind under the control of his will, and you may trust his 
self-esteem to exhibit him in the character of a substantially intelligent 
witness.
"As to the future, I am, of course, not able to speak positively. I can only 
state my views.
"That he will end in madness (if he live), I entertain little or no doubt. The 
question of when the madness will show itself depends entirely on the state of 
his health. His nervous system is highly sensitive, and there are signs that his 
way of life has already damaged it. If he conquer the bad habits to which I have 
alluded in an earlier part of my report, and if he pass many hours of every day 
quietly in the open air, he may last as a sane man for years to come. If he 
persist in his present way of life--or, in other words, if further mischief 
occur to that sensitive nervous system--his lapse into insanity must infallibly 
take place when the mischief has reached its culminating point. Without warning 
to himself or to others, the whole mental structure will give way; and, at a 
moment's notice, while he is acting as quietly or speaking as intelligently as 
at his best time, the man will drop (if I may use the expression) into madness 
or idiocy. In either case, when the catastrophe has happened, it is only due to 
his friends to add that they can (as I believe) entertain no hope of his cure. 
The balance once lost, will be lost for life."
There it ended. Mr. Playmore put the letter back in his drawer.
"You have just read the opinion of one of our highest living authorities," he 
said. "Does Dexter strike you as a likely man to give his nervous system a 
chance of recovery? Do you see no obstacles and no perils in your way?"
My silence answered him.
"Suppose you go back to Dexter," he proceeded. "And suppose that the doctor's 
opinion exaggerates the peril in his case. What are you to do? The last time you 
saw him, you had the immense advantage of taking him by surprise. Those 
sensitive nerves of his gave way, and he betrayed the fear that you aroused in 
him. Can you take him by surprise again? Not you! He is prepared for you now; 
and he will be on his guard. If you encounter nothing worse, you will have his 
cunning to deal with next. Are you his match at that? But for Lady Clarinda he 
would have hopelessly misled you on the subject of Mrs. Beauly."
There was no answering this, either. I was foolish enough to try to answer it, 
for all that.
"He told me the truth so far as he knew it," I rejoined. "He really saw what he 
said he saw in the corridor at Gleninch."
"He told you the truth," returned Mr. Playmore, "because he was cunning enough 
to see that the truth would help him in irritating your suspicions. You don't 
really believe that he shared your suspicions?"
"Why not?" I said. "He was as ignorant of what Mrs. Beauly was really doing on 
that night as I was--until I met Lady Clarinda. It remains to be seen whether he 
will not be as much astonished as I was when I tell him what Lady Clarinda told 
me."
This smart reply produced an effect which I had not anticipated.
To my surprise, Mr. Playmore abruptly dropped all further discussion on his 
side. He appeared to despair of convincing me, and he owned it indirectly in his 
next words.
"Will nothing that I can say to you," he asked, "induce you to think as I think 
in this matter?"
"I have not your ability or your experience, "I answered. "I am sorry to say I 
can't think as you think."
"And you are really determined to see Miserrimus Dexter again?"
"I have engaged myself to see him again."
He waited a little, and thought over it.
"You have honored me by asking for my advice," he said. "I earnestly advise you, 
Mrs. Eustace, to break your engagement. I go even further than that--I entreat 
you not to see Dexter again."
Just what my mother-in-law had said! just what Benjamin and Major Fitz-David had 
said! They were all against me. And still I held out.
I wonder, when I look back at it, at my own obstinacy. I am almost ashamed to 
relate that I made Mr. Playmore no reply. He waited, still looking at me. I felt 
irritated by that fixed look. I arose, and stood before him with my eyes on the 
floor.
He arose in his turn. He understood that the conference was over.
"Well, well," he said, with a kind of sad good-humor, "I suppose it is 
unreasonable of me to expect that a young woman like you should share any 
opinion with an old lawyer like me. Let me only remind you that our conversation 
must remain strictly confidential for the present; and then let us change the 
subject. Is there anything that I can do for you? Are you alone in Edinburgh?"
"No. I am traveling with an old friend of mine, who has known me from 
childhood."
"And do you stay here to-morrow?"
"I think so."
"Will you do me one favor? Will you think over what has passed between us, and 
will you come back to me in the morning?"
"Willingly, Mr. Playmore, if it is only to thank you again for your kindness."
On that understanding we parted. He sighed--the cheerful man sighed, as he 
opened the door for me. Women are contradictory creatures. That sigh affected me 
more than all his arguments. I felt myself blush for my own head-strong 
resistance to him as I took my leave and turned away into the street.



CHAPTER XXXIV.
GLENINCH.



"AHA!" said Benjamin, complacently. "So the lawyer thinks, as I do, that you 
will be highly imprudent if you go back to Mr. Dexter? A hard-headed, sensible 
man the lawyer, no doubt. You will listen to Mr. Playmore, won't you, though you 
wouldn't listen to me?"
(I had of course respected Mr. Playmore's confidence in me when Benjamin and I 
met on my return to the hotel. Not a word relating to the lawyer's horrible 
suspicion of Miserrimus Dexter had passed my lips.)
"You must forgive me, my old friend," I said, answering Benjamin. "I am afraid 
it has come to this--try as I may, I can listen to nobody who advises me. On our 
way here I honestly meant to be guided by Mr. Playmore--we should never have 
taken this long journey if I had not honestly meant it. I have tried, tried hard 
to be a teachable, reasonable woman. But there is something in me that won't be 
taught. I am afraid I shall go back to Dexter."
Even Benjamin lost all patience with me this time.
"What is bred in the bone," he said, quoting the old proverb, "will never come 
out of the flesh. In years gone by, you were the most obstinate child that ever 
made a mess in a nursery. Oh, dear me, we might as well have stayed in London."
"No," I replied, "now we have traveled to Edinburgh, we will see something 
(interesting to me at any rate) which we should never have seen if we had not 
left London. My husband's country-house is within a few miles of us here. 
To-morrow--we will go to Gleninch."
"Where the poor lady was poisoned?" asked Benjamin, with a look of dismay. "You 
mean that place?"
"Yes. I want to see the room in which she died; I want to go all over the 
house."
Benjamin crossed his hands resignedly on his lap. "I try to understand the new 
generation," said the old man, sadly; "but I can't manage it. The new generation 
beats me."
I sat down to write to Mr. Playmore about the visit to Gleninch. The house in 
which the tragedy had occurred that had blighted my husband's life was, to my 
mind, the most interesting house on the habitable globe. The prospect of 
visiting Gleninch had, indeed (to tell the truth), strongly influenced my 
resolution to consult the Edinburgh lawyer. I sent my note to Mr. Playmore by a 
messenger, and received the kindest reply in return. If I would wait until the 
afternoon, he would get the day's business done, and would take us to Gleninch 
in his own carriage.
Benjamin's obstinacy--in its own quiet way, and on certain occasions only--was 
quite a match for mine. He had privately determined, as one of the old 
generation, to have nothing to do with Gleninch. Not a word on the subject 
escaped him until Mr. Playmore's carriage was at the hotel door. At that 
appropriate moment Benjamin remembered an old friend of his in Edinburgh. "Will 
you please to excuse me, Valeria? My friend's name is Saunders; and he will take 
it unkindly of me if I don't dine with him to-day."



Apart from the associations that I connected with it, there was nothing to 
interest a traveler at Gleninch.
The country around was pretty and well cultivated, and nothing more. The park 
was, to an English eye, wild and badly kept. The house had been built within the 
last seventy or eighty years. Outside, it was as bare of all ornament as a 
factory, and as gloomily heavy in effect as a prison. Inside, the deadly 
dreariness, the close, oppressive solitude of a deserted dwelling wearied the 
eye and weighed on the mind, from the roof to the basement. The house had been 
shut up since the time of the Trial. A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the 
keys and the charge of it. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful 
disapproval of our intrusion when Mr. Playmore ordered him to open the doors and 
shutters, and let the light in on the dark, deserted place. Fires were burning 
in the library and the picture-gallery, to preserve the treasures which they 
contained from the damp. It was not easy, at first, to look at the cheerful 
blaze without fancying that the inhabitants of the house must surely come in and 
warm themselves. Ascending to the upper floor, I saw the rooms made familiar to 
me by the Report of the Trial. I entered the little study, with the old books on 
the shelves, and the key still missing from the locked door of communication 
with the bedchamber. I looked into the room in which the unhappy mistress of 
Gleninch had suffered and died. The bed was left in its place; the sofa on which 
the nurse had snatched her intervals of repose was at its foot; the Indian 
cabinet, in which the crumpled paper with the grains of arsenic had been found, 
still held its little collection of curiosities. I moved on its pivot the 
invalid-table on which she had taken her meals and written her poems, poor soul. 
The place was dreary and dreadful; the heavy air felt as if it were still 
burdened with its horrid load of misery and distrust. I was glad to get out 
(after a passing glance at the room which Eustace had occupied in those days) 
into the Guests' Corridor. There was the bedroom, at the door of which 
Miserrimus Dexter had waited and watched. There was the oaken floor along which 
he had hopped, in his horrible way, following the footsteps of the servant 
disguised in her mistress's clothes. Go where I might, the ghosts of the dead 
and the absent were with me, step by step. Go where I might, the lonely horror 
of the house had its still and awful voice for Me: "I keep the secret of the 
Poison! I hide the mystery of the death!"
The oppression of the place became unendurable. I longed for the pure sky and 
the free air. My companion noticed and understood me.
"Come," he said. "We have had enough of the house. Let us look at the grounds."
In the gray quiet of the evening we roamed about the lonely gardens, and 
threaded our way through the rank, neglected shrubberies. Wandering here and 
wandering there, we drifted into the kitchen garden--with one little patch still 
sparely cultivated by the old man and his wife, and all the rest a wilderness of 
weeds. Beyond the far end of the garden, divided from it by a low paling of 
wood, there stretched a patch of waste ground, sheltered on three sides by 
trees. In one lost corner of the ground an object, common enough elsewhere, 
attracted my attention here. The object was a dust-heap. The great size of it, 
and the curious situation in which it was placed, aroused a moment's languid 
curiosity in me. I stopped, and looked at the dust and ashes, at the broken 
crockery and the old iron. Here there was a torn hat, and there some fragments 
of rotten old boots, and scattered around a small attendant litter of torn paper 
and frowzy rags.
"What are you looking at?" asked Mr. Playmore.
"At nothing more remarkable than the dust-heap," I answered.
"In tidy England, I suppose, you would have all that carted away out of sight," 
said the lawyer. "We don't mind in Scotland, as long as the dust-heap is far 
enough away not to be smelt at the house. Besides, some of it, sifted, comes in 
usefully as manure for the garden. Here the place is deserted, and the rubbish 
in consequence has not been disturbed. Everything at Gleninch, Mrs. Eustace (the 
big dust-heap included), is waiting for the new mistress to set it to rights. 
One of these days you may be queen here--who knows?"
"I shall never see this place again," I said.
"Never is a long day," returned my companion. "And time has its surprises in 
store for all of us."
We turned away, and walked back in silence to the park gate, at which the 
carriage was waiting.
On the return to Edinburgh, Mr. Playmore directed the conversation to topics 
entirely unconnected with my visit to Gleninch. He saw that my mind stood in 
need of relief; and he most good-naturedly, and successfully, exerted himself to 
amuse me. It was not until we were close to the city that he touched on the 
subject of my return to London.
"Have you decided yet on the day when you leave Edinburgh?" he asked.
"We leave Edinburgh," I replied, "by the train of to-morrow morning."
"Do you still see no reason to alter the opinions which you expressed yesterday? 
Does your speedy departure mean that?"
"I am afraid it does, Mr. Playmore. When I am an older woman, I may be a wiser 
woman. In the meantime, I can only trust to your indulgence if I still blindly 
blunder on in my own way."
He smiled pleasantly, and patted my hand--then changed on a sudden, and looked 
at me gravely and attentively before he opened his lips again.
"This is my last opportunity of speaking to you before you go," he said. "May I 
speak freely?"
"As freely as you please, Mr. Playmore. Whatever you may say to me will only add 
to my grateful sense of your kindness."
"I have very little to say, Mrs. Eustace--and that little begins with a word of 
caution. You told me yesterday that, when you paid your last visit to Miserrimus 
Dexter, you went to him alone. Don't do that again. Take somebody with you."
"Do you think I am in any danger, then?"
"Not in the ordinary sense of the word. I only think that a friend may be useful 
in keeping Dexter's audacity (he is one of the most impudent men living) within 
proper limits. Then, again, in case anything worth remembering and acting on 
should fall from him in his talk, a friend may be valuable as witness. In your 
place, I should have a witness with me who could take notes--but then I am a 
lawyer, and my business is to make a fuss about trifles. Let me only say--go 
with a companion when you next visit Dexter; and be on your guard against 
yourself when your talk turns on Mrs. Beauly."
"On my guard against myself? What do you mean?"
"Practice, my dear Mrs. Eustace, has given me an eye for the little weaknesses 
of human nature. You are (quite naturally) disposed to be jealous of Mrs. 
Beauly; and you are, in consequence, not in full possession of your excellent 
common-sense when Dexter uses that lady as a means of blindfolding you. Am I 
speaking too freely?"
"Certainly not. It is very degrading to me to be jealous of Mrs. Beauly. My 
vanity suffers dreadfully when I think of it. But my common-sense yields to 
conviction. I dare say you are right."
"I am delighted to find that we agree on one point," he rejoined, dryly. "I 
don't despair yet of convincing you in that far more serious matter which is 
still in dispute between us. And, what is more, if you will throw no obstacles 
in the way, I look to Dexter himself to help me."
This aroused my curiosity. How Miserrimus Dexter could help him, in that or in 
any other way, was a riddle beyond my reading.
"You propose to repeat to Dexter all that Lady Clarinda told you about Mrs. 
Beauly," he went on. "And you think it is likely that Dexter will be 
overwhelmed, as you were overwhelmed, when he hears the story. I am going to 
venture on a prophecy. I say that Dexter will disappoint you. Far from showing 
any astonishment, he will boldly tell you that you have been duped by a 
deliberately false statement of facts, invented and set afloat, in her own 
guilty interests, by Mrs. Beauly. Now tell me--if he really try, in that way, to 
renew your unfounded suspicion of an innocent woman, will that shake your 
confidence in your own opinion?"
"It will entirely destroy my confidence in my own opinion, Mr. Playmore."
"Very good. I shall expect you to write to me, in any case; and I believe we 
shall be of one mind before the week is out. Keep strictly secret all that I 
said to you yesterday about Dexter. Don't even mention my name when you see him. 
Thinking of him as I think now, I would as soon touch the hand of the hangman as 
the hand of that monster! God bless you! Good-by."
So he said his farewell words, at the door of the hotel. Kind, genial, 
clever--but oh, how easily prejudiced, how shockingly obstinate in holding to 
his own opinion! And what an opinion! I shuddered as I thought of it.



CHAPTER XXXV.
MR. PLAYMORE'S PROPHECY.



WE reached London between eight and nine in the evening. Strictly methodical in 
all his habits, Benjamin had telegraphed to his housekeeper, from Edinburgh, to 
have supper ready or us by ten o'clock, and to send the cabman whom he always 
employed to meet us at the station.
Arriving at the villa, we were obliged to wait for a moment to let a pony-chaise 
get by us before we could draw up at Benjamin's door. The chaise passed very 
slowly, driven by a rough-looking man, with a pipe in his mouth. But for the 
man, I might have doubted whether the pony was quite a stranger to me. As things 
were, I thought no more of the matter.
Benjamin's respectable old housekeeper opened the garden gate, and startled me 
by bursting into a devout ejaculation of gratitude at the sight of her master. 
"The Lord be praised, sir!" she cried; "I thought you would never come back!"
"Anything wrong?" asked Benjamin, in his own impenetrably quiet way.
The housekeeper trembled at the question, and answered in these enigmatical 
words:
"My mind's upset, sir; and whether things are wrong or whether things are right 
is more than I can say. Hours ago, a strange man came in and asked"--she 
stopped, as if she were completely bewildered--looked for a moment vacantly at 
her master--and suddenly addressed herself to me. "And asked," she proceeded, 
"when you was expected back, ma'am. I told him what my master had telegraphed, 
and the man says upon that, 'Wait a bit,' he says; 'I'm coming back.' He came 
back in a minute or less; and he carried a Thing in his arms which curdled my 
blood--it did!--and set me shaking from the crown of my head to the sole of my 
foot. I know I ought to have stopped it; but I couldn't stand upon my legs, much 
less put the man out of the house. In he went, without 'with your leave,' or 'by 
your leave,' Mr. Benjamin, sir--in he went, with the Thing in his arms, straight 
through to your library. And there It has been all these hours. And there It is 
now. I've spoken to the police; but they wouldn't interfere; and what to do next 
is more than my poor head can tell. Don't you go in by yourself, ma'am! You'll 
be frightened out of your wits--you will!"
I persisted in entering the house, for all that. Aided by the pony, I easily 
solved the mystery of the housekeeper's otherwise unintelligible narrative. 
Passing through the dining-room (where the supper-table was already laid for 
us), I looked through the half-opened library door.
Yes, there was Miserrimus Dexter, arrayed in his pink jacket, fast asleep in 
Benjamin's favorite arm-chair! No coverlet hid his horrible deformity. Nothing 
was sacrificed to conventional ideas of propriety in his extraordinary dress. I 
could hardly wonder that the poor old housekeeper trembled from head to foot 
when she spoke of him.
"Valeria," said Benjamin, pointing to the Portent in the chair. "Which is it--an 
Indian idol, or a man?"
I have already described Miserrimus Dexter as possessing the sensitive ear of a 
dog: he now allowed that he also slept the light sleep of a dog. Quietly as 
Benjamin had spoken, the strange voice aroused him on the instant. He rubbed his 
eyes, and smiled as innocently as a waking child.
"How do you do, Mrs. Valeria?" he said. "I have had a nice little sleep. You 
don't know how happy I am to see you again. Who is this?")
He rubbed his eyes once more! and looked at Benjamin. Not knowing what else to 
do in this extraordinary emergency, I presented my visitor to the master of the 
house.
"Excuse my getting up, sir," said Miserrimus Dexter. "I can't get up--I have no 
legs. You look as if you thought I was occupying your chair? If I am committing 
an intrusion, be so good as to put your umbrella under me, and give me a jerk. I 
shall fall on my hands, and I shan't be offended with you. I will submit to a 
tumble and a scolding--but please don't break my heart by sending me away. That 
beautiful woman there can be very cruel sometimes, sir, when the fit takes her. 
She went away when I stood in the sorest need of a little talk with her--she 
went away, and left me to my loneliness and my suspense. I am a poor deformed 
wretch, with a warm heart, and, perhaps, an insatiable curiosity as well. 
Insatiable curiosity (have you ever felt it?) is a curse. I bore it until my 
brains began to boil in my head; and then I sent for my gardener, and made him 
drive me here. I like being here. The air of your library soothes me; the sight 
of Mrs. Valeria is balm to my wounded heart. She has something to tell 
me--something that I am dying to hear. If she is not too tired after her 
journey, and if you will let her tell it, I promise to have myself taken away 
when she has done. Dear Mr. Benjamin, you look like the refuge of the afflicted. 
I am afflicted. Shake hands like a good Christian, and take me in."
He held out his hand. His soft blue eyes melted into an expression of piteous 
entreaty. Completely stupefied by the amazing harangue of which he had been made 
the object, Benjamin took the offered hand, with the air of a man in a dream. "I 
hope I see you well, sir," he said, mechanically--and then looked around at me, 
to know what he was to do next.
"I understand Mr. Dexter," I whispered. "Leave him to me."
Benjamin stole a last bewildered look at the object in the chair; bowed to it, 
with the instinct of politeness which never failed him; and (still with the air 
of a man in a dream) withdrew into the next room.
Left together, we looked at each other, for the first moment, in silence.
Whether I unconsciously drew on that inexhaustible store of indulgence which a 
woman always keeps in reserve for a man who owns that he has need of her, or 
whether, resenting as I did Mr. Playmore's horrible suspicion of him, my heart 
was especially accessible to feelings of compassion in his unhappy case, I 
cannot tell. I only know that I pitied Miserrimus Dexter at that moment as I had 
never pitied him yet; and that I spared him the reproof which I should certainly 
have administered to any other man who had taken the liberty of establishing 
himself, uninvited, in Benjamin's house.
He was the first to speak.
"Lady Clarinda has destroyed your confidence in me!" he began, wildly.
"Lady Clarinda has done nothing of the sort," I replied. "She has not attempted 
to influence my opinion. I was really obliged to leave London, as I told you."
He sighed, and closed his eyes contentedly, as if I had relieved him of a heavy 
weight of anxiety.
"Be merciful to me," he said, "and tell me something more. I have been so 
miserable in your absence." He suddenly opened his eyes again, and looked at me 
with an appearance of the greatest interest. "Are you very much fatigued by 
traveling?" he proceeded. "I am hungry for news of what happened at the Major's 
dinner party. Is it cruel of me to tell you so, when you have not rested after 
your journey? Only one question to-night, and I will leave the rest till 
to-morrow. What did Lady Clarinda say about Mrs. Beauly? All that you wanted to 
hear?"
"All, and more," I answered.
"What? what? what?" he cried wild with impatience in a moment.
Mr. Playmore's last prophetic words were vividly present to my mind. He had 
declared, in the most positive manner, that Dexter would persist in misleading 
me, and would show no signs of astonishment when I repeated what Lady Clarinda 
had told me of Mrs. Beauly. I resolved to put the lawyer's prophecy--so far as 
the question of astonishment was concerned--to the sharpest attainable test. I 
said not a word to Miserrimus Dexter in the way of preface or preparation: I 
burst on him with my news as abruptly as possible.
"The person you saw in the corridor was not Mrs. Beauly," I said. "It was the 
maid, dressed in her mistress's cloak and hat. Mrs. Beauly herself was not in 
the house at all. Mrs. Beauly herself was dancing at a masked ball in Edinburgh. 
There is what the maid told Lady Clarinda; and there is what Lady Clarinda told 
me."
In the absorbing interest of the moment, I poured out those words one after 
another as fast as they would pass my lips. Miserrimus Dexter completely 
falsified the lawyer's prediction. He shuddered under the shock. His eyes opened 
wide with amazement. "Say it again!" he cried. "I can't take it all in at once. 
You stun me."
I was more than contented with this result--I triumphed in my victory. For once, 
I had really some reason to feel satisfied with myself. I had taken the 
Christian and merciful side in my discussion with Mr. Playmore; and I had won my 
reward. I could sit in the same room with Miserrimus Dexter, and feel the 
blessed conviction that I was not breathing the same air with a poisoner. Was it 
not worth the visit to Edinburgh to have made sure of that?
In repeating, at his own desire, what I had already said to him, I took care to 
add the details which made Lady Clarinda's narrative coherent and credible. He 
listened throughout with breathless attention--here and there repeating the 
words after me, to impress them the more surely and the more deeply on his mind.
"What is to be said? what is to be done?" he asked, with a look of blank 
despair. "I can't disbelieve it. From first to last, strange as it is, it sounds 
true."
(How would Mr. Playmore have felt if he had heard those words? I did him the 
justice to believe that he would have felt heartily ashamed of himself.)
"There is nothing to be said," I rejoined, "except that Mrs. Beauly is innocent, 
and that you and I have done her a grievous wrong. Don't you agree with me?"
"I entirely agree with you," he answered, without an instant's hesitation. "Mrs. 
Beauly is an innocent woman. The defense at the Trial was the right defense 
after all."
He folded his arms complacently; he looked perfectly satisfied to leave the 
matter there.
I was not of his mind. To my own amazement, I now found myself the least 
reasonable person of the two!
Miserrimus Dexter (to use the popular phrase) had given me more than I had 
bargained for. He had not only done all that I had anticipated in the way of 
falsifying Mr. Playmore's prediction--he had actually advanced beyond my limits. 
I could go the length of recognizing Mrs. Beauly's innocence; but at that point 
I stopped. If the Defense at the Trial were the right defense, farewell to all 
hope of asserting my husband's innocence. I held to that hope as I held to my 
love and my life.
"Speak for yourself," I said. "My opinion of the Defense remains unchanged."
He started, and knit his brows as if I had disappointed and displeased him.
"Does that mean that you are determined to go on?"
"It does."
He was downright angry with me. He cast his customary politeness to the winds.
"Absurd! impossible!" he cried, contemptuously. "You have yourself declared that 
we wronged an innocent woman when we suspected Mrs. Beauly. Is there any one 
else whom we can suspect? It is ridiculous to ask the question. There is no 
alternative left but to accept the facts as they are, and to stir no further in 
the matter of the poisoning at Gleninch. It is childish to dispute plain 
conclusions. You must give up."
"You may be angry with me if you will, Mr. Dexter. Neither your anger nor your 
arguments will make me give up."
He controlled himself by an effort--he was quiet and polite again when he next 
spoke to me.
"Very well. Pardon me for a moment if I absorb myself in my own thoughts. I want 
to do something which I have not done yet."
"What may that be, Mr. Dexter?"
"I am going to put myself into Mrs. Beauly's skin, and to think with Mrs. 
Beauly's mind. Give me a minute. Thank you."
What did he mean? what new transformation of him was passing before my eyes? Was 
there ever such a puzzle of a man as this? Who that saw him now, intently 
pursuing his new train of thought, would have recognized him as the childish 
creature who had awoke so innocently, and had astonished Benjamin by the 
infantine nonsense which he talked? It is said, and said truly, that there are 
many sides to every human character. Dexter's many sides were developing 
themselves at such a rapid rate of progress that they were already beyond my 
counting.
He lifted his head, and fixed a look of keen inquiry on me.
"I have come out of Mrs. Beauly's skin," he announced. "And I have arrived at 
this result: We are two impetuous people; and we have been a little hasty in 
rushing at a conclusion."
He stopped. I said nothing. Was the shadow of a doubt of him beginning to rise 
in my mind? I waited, and listened.
"I am as fully satisfied as ever of the truth of what Lady Clarinda told you, he 
proceeded. "But I see, on consideration, what I failed to see at the time. The 
story admits of two interpretations--one on the surface, and another under the 
surface. I look under the surface, in your interests; and I say, it is just 
possible that Mrs. Beauly may have been cunning enough to forestall suspicion, 
and to set up an Alibi."
I am ashamed to own that I did not understand what he meant by the last 
word--Alibi. He saw that I was not following him, and spoke out more plainly.
"Was the maid something more than her mistress's passive accomplice?" he said. 
"Was she the Hand that her mistress used? Was she on her way to give the first 
dose of poison when she passed me in this corridor? Did Mrs. Beauly spend the 
night in Edinburgh--so as to have her defense ready, if suspicion fell upon 
her?"
My shadowy doubt of him became substantial doubt when I heard that. Had I 
absolved him a little too readily? Was he really trying to renew my suspicions 
of Mrs. Beauly, as Mr. Playmore had foretold? This time I was obliged to answer 
him. In doing so, I unconsciously employed one of the phrases which the lawyer 
had used to me during my first interview with him.
"That sounds rather far-fetched, Mr. Dexter," I said.
To my relief, he made no attempt to defend the new view that he had advanced.
"It is far-fetched," he admitted. "When I said it was just possible--though I 
didn't claim much for my idea--I said more for it perhaps than it deserved. 
Dismiss my view as ridiculous; what are you to do next? If Mrs. Beauly is not 
the poisoner (either by herself or by her maid), who is? She is innocent, and 
Eustace is innocent. Where is the other person whom you can suspect? Have I 
poisoned her?" he cried, with his eyes flashing, and his voice rising to its 
highest notes. "Do you, does anybody, suspect Me? I loved her; I adored her; I 
have never been the same man since her death. Hush! I will trust you with a 
secret. (Don't tell your husband; it might be the destruction of our 
friendship.) I would have married her, before she met with Eustace, if she would 
have taken me. When the doctors told me she had died poisoned--ask Doctor Jerome 
what I suffered; he can tell you! All through that horrible night I was awake; 
watching my opportunity until I found my way to her. I got into the room, and 
took my last leave of the cold remains of the angel whom I loved. I cried over 
her. I kissed her. for the first and last time. I stole one little lock of her 
hair. I have worn it ever since; I have kissed it night and day. Oh, God! the 
room comes back to me! the dead face comes back to me! Look! look!"
He tore from its place of concealment in his bosom a little locket, fastened by 
a ribbon around his neck. He threw it to me where I sat, and burst into a 
passion of tears.
A man in my place might have known what to do. Being only a woman, I yielded to 
the compassionate impulse of the moment.
I got up and crossed the room to him. I gave him back his locket, and put my 
hand, without knowing what I was about, on the poor wretch's shoulder. "I am 
incapable of suspecting you, Mr. Dexter," I said, gently. "No such idea ever 
entered my head. I pity you from the bottom of my heart."
He caught my hand in his, and devoured it with kisses. His lips burned me like 
fire. He twisted himself suddenly in the chair, and wound his arm around my 
waist. In the terror and indignation of the moment, vainly struggling with him, 
I cried out for help.
The door opened, and Benjamin appeared on the threshold.
Dexter let go his hold of me.
I ran to Benjamin, and prevented him from advancing into the room. In all my 
long experience of my fatherly old friend I had never seen him really angry yet. 
I saw him more than angry now. He was pale--the patient, gentle old man was pale 
with rage! I held him at the door with all my strength.
"You can't lay your hand on a cripple," I said. Send for the man outside to take 
him a way.
I drew Benjamin out of the room, and closed and locked the library door. The 
housekeeper was in the dining-room. I sent her out to call the driver of the 
pony-chaise into the house.
The man came in--the rough man whom I had noticed when we were approaching the 
garden gate. Benjamin opened the library door in stern silence. It was perhaps 
unworthy of me, but I could not resist the temptation to look in.
Miserrimus Dexter had sunk down in the chair. The rough man lifted his master 
with a gentleness that surprised me. "Hide my face," I heard Dexter say to him, 
in broken tones. He opened his coarse pilot-jacket, and hid his master's head 
under it, and so went silently out--with the deformed creature held to his 
bosom, like a woman sheltering her child.



CHAPTER XXXVI.
ARIEL.



I PASSED a sleepless night.
The outrage that had been offered to me was bad enough in itself. But 
consequences were associated with it which might affect me more seriously still. 
In so far as the attainment of the one object of my life might yet depend on my 
personal association with Miserrimus Dexter, an insurmountable obstacle appeared 
to be now placed in my way. Even in my husband's interests, ought I to permit a 
man who had grossly insulted me to approach me again? Although I was no prude, I 
recoiled from the thought of it.
I arose late, and sat down at my desk, trying to summon energy enough to write 
to Mr. Playmore--and trying in vain.
Toward noon (while Benjamin happened to be out for a little while) the 
housekeeper announced the arrival of another strange visitor at the gate of the 
villa.
"It's a woman this time, ma'am--or something like one," said this worthy person, 
confidentially. "A great, stout, awkward, stupid creature, with a man's hat on 
and a man's stick in her hand. She says she has got a note for you, and she 
won't give it to anybody but you. I'd better not let her in--had I?"
Recognizing the original of the picture, I astonished the housekeeper by 
consenting to receive the messenger immediately.
Ariel entered the room--in stolid silence, as usual. But I noticed a change in 
her which puzzled me. Her dull eyes were red and bloodshot. Traces of tears (as 
I fancied) were visible on her fat, shapeless cheeks. She crossed the room, on 
her way to my chair, with a less determined tread than was customary with her. 
Could Ariel (I asked myself) be woman enough to cry? Was it within the limits of 
possibility that Ariel should approach me in sorrow and in fear?
"I hear you have brought something for me?" I said. "Won't you sit down?"
She handed me a letter--without answering and without taking a chair. I opened 
the envelope. The letter inside was written by Miserrimus Dexter. It contained 
these lines:



"Try to pity me, if you have any pity left for a miserable man; I have bitterly 
expiated the madness of a moment. If you could see me--even you would own that 
my punishment has been heavy enough. For God's sake, don't abandon me! I was 
beside myself when I let the feeling that you have awakened in me get the better 
of my control. It shall never show itself again; it shall be a secret that dies 
with me. Can I expect you to believe this? No. I won't ask you to believe me; I 
won't ask you to trust me in the future. If you ever consent to see me again, 
let it be in the presence of any third person whom you may appoint to protect 
you. I deserve that--I will submit to it; I will wait till time has composed 
your angry feeling against me. All I ask now is leave to hope. Say to Ariel, 'I 
forgive him; and one day I will let him see me again.' She will remember it, for 
love of me. If you send her back without a message, you send me to the 
mad-house. Ask her, if you don't believe me.
"MISERRIMUS DEXTER."



I finished the strange letter, and looked at Ariel.
She stood with her eyes on the floor, and held out to me the thick walking-stick 
which she carried in her hand.
"Take the stick" were the first words she said to me.
"Why am I to take it?" I asked.
She struggled a little with her sluggishly working mind, and slowly put her 
thoughts into words.
"You're angry with the Master," she said. "Take it out on Me. Here's the stick. 
Beat me."
"Beat you!" I exclaimed.
"My back's broad," said the poor creature. "I won't make a row. I'll bear it. 
Drat you, take the stick! Don't vex him. Whack it out on my back. Beat me."
She roughly forced the stick into my hand; she turned her poor shapeless 
shoulders to me; waiting for the blow. It was at once dreadful and touching to 
see her. The tears rose in my eyes. I tried, gently and patiently, to reason 
with her. Quite useless! The idea of taking the Master's punishment on herself 
was the one idea in her mind. "Don't vex him," she repeated. "Beat me."
"What do you mean by 'vexing him'?" I asked.
She tried to explain, and failed to find the words. She showed me by imitation, 
as a savage might have shown me, what she meant. Striding to the fire-place, she 
crouched on the rug, and looked into the fire with a horrible vacant stare. Then 
she clasped her hands over her forehead, and rocked slowly to and fro, still 
staring into the fire. "There's how he sits!" she said, with a sudden burst of 
speech. "Hours on hours, there's how he sits! Notices nobody. Cries about you."
The picture she presented recalled to my memory the Report of Dexter's health, 
and the doctor's plain warning of peril waiting for him in the future.
Even if I could have resisted Ariel, I must have yielded to the vague dread of 
consequences which now shook me in secret.
"Don't do that!" I cried. She was still rocking herself in imitation of the 
"Master," and still staring into the fire with her hands to her head. "Get up, 
pray! I am not angry with him now. I forgive him."
She rose on her hands and knees, and waited, looking up intently into my face. 
In that attitude--more like a dog than a human being--she repeated her customary 
petition when she wanted to fix words that interested her in her mind.
"Say it again!"
I did as she bade me. She was not satisfied.
"Say it as it is in the letter," she went on. "Say it as the Master said it to 
Me."
I looked back at the letter, and repeated the form of message contained in the 
latter part of it, word for word:
"I forgive him; and one day I will let him see me again."
She sprang to her feet at a bound. For the first time since she had entered the 
room her dull face began to break slowly into light and life.
"That's it!" she cried. "Hear if I can say it, too; hear if I've got it by 
heart."
Teaching her exactly as I should have taught a child, I slowly fastened the 
message, word by word, on her mind.
"Now rest yourself," I said; "and let me give you something to eat and drink 
after your long walk."
I might as well have spoken to one of the chairs. She snatched up her stick from 
the floor, and burst out with a hoarse shout of joy. "I've got it by heart!" she 
cried. "This will cool the Master's head! Hooray!" She dashed out into the 
passage like a wild animal escaping from its cage. I was just in time to see her 
tear open the garden gate, and set forth on her walk back at a pace which made 
it hopeless to attempt to follow and stop her.
I returned to the sitting-room, pondering on a question which has perplexed 
wiser heads than mine. Could a man who was hopelessly and entirely wicked have 
inspired such devoted attachment to him as Dexter had inspired in the faithful 
woman who had just left me? in the rough gardener who had carried him out so 
gently on the previous night? Who can decide? The greatest scoundrel living 
always has a friend--in a woman or a dog.
I sat down again at my desk, and made another attempt to write to Mr. Playmore.
Recalling, for the purpose of my letter, all that Miserrimus Dexter had said to 
me, my memory dwelt with special interest on the strange outbreak of feeling 
which had led him to betray the secret of his infatuation for Eustace's first 
wife. I saw again the ghastly scene in the death-chamber--the deformed creature 
crying over the corpse in the stillness of the first dark hours of the new day. 
The horrible picture took a strange hold on my mind. I arose, and walked up and 
down, and tried to turn my thoughts some other way. It was not to be done: the 
scene was too familiar to me to be easily dismissed. I had myself visited the 
room and looked at the bed. I had myself walked in the corridor which Dexter had 
crossed on his way to take his last leave of her.
The corridor? I stopped. My thoughts suddenly took a new direction, uninfluenced 
by any effort of my will.
What other association besides the association with Dexter did I connect with 
the corridor? Was it something I had seen during my visit to Gleninch? No. Was 
it something I had read? I snatched up the Report of the Trial to see. It opened 
at a page which contained the nurse's evidence. I read the evidence through 
again, without recovering the lost remembrance until I came to these lines close 
at the end:



"Before bed-time I went upstairs to prepare the remains of the deceased lady for 
the coffin. The room in which she lay was locked; the door leading into Mr. 
Macallan's room being secured, as well as the door leading into the corridor. 
The keys had been taken away by Mr. Gale. Two of the men-servants were posted 
outside the bedroom to keep watch. They were to be relieved at four in the 
morning--that was all they could tell me."



There was my lost association with the corridor! There was what I ought to have 
remembered when Miserrimus Dexter was telling me of his visit to the dead!
How had he got into the bedroom--the doors being locked, and the keys being 
taken away by Mr. Gale? There was but one of the locked doors of which Mr. Gale 
had not got the key--the door of communication between the study and the 
bedroom. The key was missing from this. Had it been stolen? And was Dexter the 
thief? He might have passed by the men on the watch while they were asleep, or 
he might have crossed the corridor in an unguarded interval while the men were 
being relieved. But how could he have got into the bedchamber except by way of 
the locked study door? He must have had the key! And he must have secreted it 
weeks before Mrs. Eustace Macallan's death! When the nurse first arrived at 
Gleninch, on the seventh of the month, her evidence declared the key of the door 
of communication to be then missing.
To what conclusion did these considerations and discoveries point? Had 
Miserrimus Dexter, in a moment of ungovernable agitation, unconsciously placed 
the clew in my hands? Was the pivot on which turned the whole mystery of the 
poisoning at Gleninch the missing key?
I went back for the third time to my desk. The one person who might be trusted 
to find the answer to those questions was Mr. Playmore. I wrote him a full and 
careful account of all that had happened; I begged him to forgive and forget my 
ungracious reception of the advice which he had so kindly offered to me; and I 
promised beforehand to do nothing without first consulting his opinion in the 
new emergency which now confronted me.
The day was fine for the time of year; and by way of getting a little wholesome 
exercise after the surprises and occupations of the morning, I took my letter to 
Mr. Playmore to the post.
Returning to the villa, I was informed that another visitor was waiting to see 
me: a civilized visitor this time, who had given her name. My 
mother-in-law--Mrs. Macallan.



CHAPTER XXXVII.
AT THE BEDSIDE.



BEFORE she had uttered a word, I saw in my mother-in-law's face that she brought 
bad news.
"Eustace?" I said.
She answered me by a look.
"Let me hear it at once!" I cried. "I can bear anything but suspense."
Mrs. Macallan lifted her hand, and showed me a telegraphic dispatch which she 
had hitherto kept concealed in the folds of her dress.
"I can trust your courage," she said. "There is no need, my child, to 
prevaricate with you. Read that."
I read the telegram. It was sent by the chief surgeon of a field-hospital; and 
it was dated from a village in the north of Spain.
"Mr. Eustace severely wounded in a skirmish by a stray shot. Not in danger, so 
far. Every care taken of him. Wait for another telegram."
I turned away my face, and bore as best I might the pang that wrung me when I 
read those words. I thought I knew how dearly I loved him: I had never known it 
till that moment.
My mother-in-law put her arm round me, and held me to her tenderly. She knew me 
well enough not to speak to me at that moment.
I rallied my courage, and pointed to the last sentence in the telegram.
"Do you mean to wait?" I asked.
"Not a day!" she answered. "I am going to the Foreign Office about my 
passport--I have some interest there: they can give me letters; they can advise 
and assist me. I leave to-night by the mail train to Calais."
"You leave?" I said. "Do you suppose I will let you go without me? Get my 
passport when you get yours. At seven this evening I will be at your house."
She attempted to remonstrate; she spoke of the perils of the journey. At the 
first words I stopped her. "Don't you know yet, mother, how obstinate I am? They 
may keep you waiting at the Foreign Office. Why do you waste the precious hours 
here?"
She yielded with a gentleness that was not in her everyday character. "Will my 
poor Eustace ever know what a wife he has got?" That was all she said. She 
kissed me, and went away in her carriage.



My remembrances of our journey are strangely vague and imperfect.
As I try to recall them, the memory of those more recent and more interesting 
events which occurred after my return to England gets between me and my 
adventures in Spain, and seems to force these last into a shadowy background, 
until they look like adventures that happened many years since. I confusedly 
recollect delays and alarms that tried our patience and our courage. I remember 
our finding friends (thanks to our letters of recommendation) in a Secretary to 
the Embassy and in a Queen's Messenger, who assisted and protected us at a 
critical point in the journey. I recall to mind a long succession of men in our 
employment as travelers, all equally remarkable for their dirty cloaks and their 
clean linen, for their highly civilized courtesy to women and their utterly 
barbarous cruelty to horses. Last, and most important of all, I see again, more 
clearly than I can see anything else, the one wretched bedroom of a squalid 
village inn in which we found our poor darling, prostrate between life and 
death, insensible to everything that passed in the narrow little world that lay 
around his bedside.
There was nothing romantic or interesting in the accident which had put my 
husband's life in peril.
He had ventured too near the scene of the conflict (a miserable affair) to 
rescue a poor lad who lay wounded on the field--mortally wounded, as the event 
proved. A rifle-bullet had struck him in the body. His brethren of the 
field-hospital had carried him back to their quarters at the risk of their 
lives. He was a great favorite with all of them; patient and gentle and brave; 
only wanting a little more judgment to be the most valuable recruit who had 
joined the brotherhood.
In telling me this, the surgeon kindly and delicately added a word of warning as 
well.
The fever caused by the wound had brought with it delirium, as usual. My poor 
husband's mind, in so far as his wandering words might interpret it, was filled 
by the one image of his wife. The medical attendant had heard enough in the 
course of his ministrations at the bedside, to satisfy him that any sudden 
recognition of me by Eustace (if he recovered) might be attended by the most 
lamentable results. As things were at that sad time, I might take my turn at 
nursing him, without the slightest chance of his discovering me, perhaps for 
weeks and weeks to come. But on the day when he was declared out of danger--if 
that happy day ever arrived--I must resign my place at his bedside, and must 
wait to show myself until the surgeon gave me leave.
My mother-in-law and I relieved each other regularly, day and night, in the 
sick-room.
In the hours of his delirium--hours that recurred with a pitiless regularity--my 
name was always on my poor darling's fevered lips. The ruling idea in him was 
the fine dreadful idea which I had vainly combated at our last interview. In the 
face of the verdict pronounced at the Trial, it was impossible even for his wife 
to be really and truly persuaded that he was an innocent man. All the wild 
pictures which his distempered imagination drew were equally inspired by that 
one obstinate conviction. He fancied himself to be still living with me under 
those dreaded conditions. Do what he might, I was always recalling to him the 
terrible ordeal through which he had passed. He acted his part, and he acted 
mine. He gave me a cup of tea; and I said to him, "We quarreled yesterday, 
Eustace. Is it poisoned?" He kissed me, in token of our reconciliation; and I 
laughed, and said, "It's morning now, my dear. Shall I die by nine o'clock 
to-night?" I was ill in bed, and he gave me my medicine. I looked at him with a 
doubting eye. I said to him, "You are in love with another woman. Is there 
anything in the medicine that the doctor doesn't know of?" Such was the horrible 
drama which now perpetually acted itself in his mind. Hundreds and hundreds of 
times I heard him repeat it, almost always in the same words. On other occasions 
his thoughts wandered away to my desperate project of proving him to be an 
innocent man. Sometimes he laughed at it. Sometimes he mourned over it. 
Sometimes he devised cunning schemes for placing unsuspected obstacles in my 
way. He was especially hard on me when he was inventing his preventive 
stratagems--he cheerfully instructed the visionary people who assisted him not 
to hesitate at offending or distressing me. "Never mind if you make her angry; 
never mind if you make her cry. It's all for her good; it's all to save the poor 
fool from dangers she doesn't dream of. You mustn't pity her when she says she 
does it for my sake. See! she is going to be insulted; she is going to be 
deceived; she is going to disgrace herself without knowing it. Stop her! stop 
her!" It was weak of me, I know; I ought to have kept the plain fact that he was 
out of his senses always present to my mind: still it is true that my hours 
passed at my husband's pillow were many of them hours of mortification and 
misery of which he, poor dear, was the innocent and only cause.
The weeks passed; and he still hovered between life and death.
I kept no record of the time, and I cannot now recall the exact date on which 
the first favorable change took place. I only remember that it was toward 
sunrise on a fine winter morning when we were relieved at last of our heavy 
burden of suspense. The surgeon happened to be by the bedside when his patient 
awoke. The first thing he did, after looking at Eustace, was to caution me by a 
sign to be silent and to keep out of sight. My mother-in-law and I both knew 
what this meant. With full hearts we thanked God together for giving us back the 
husband and the son.
The same evening, being alone, we ventured to speak of the future--for the first 
time since we had left home.
"The surgeon tells me," said Mrs. Macallan, "that Eustace is too weak to be 
capable of bearing anything in the nature of a surprise for some days to come. 
We have time to consider whether he is or is not to be told that he owes his 
life as much to your care as to mine. Can you find it in your heart to leave 
him, Valeria, now that God's mercy has restored him to you and to me?"
"If I only consulted my own heart," I answered, "I should never leave him 
again."
Mrs. Macallan looked at me in grave surprise.
"What else have you to consult?" she asked.
"If we both live," I replied, "I have to think of the happiness of his life and 
the happiness of mine in the years that are to come. I can bear a great deal, 
mother, but I cannot endure the misery of his leaving me for the second time."
"You wrong him, Valeria--I firmly believe you wrong him--in thinking it possible 
that he can leave you again."
"Dear Mrs. Macallan, have you forgotten already what we have both heard him say 
of me while we have been sitting by his bedside?"
"We have heard the ravings of a man in delirium. It is surely hard to hold 
Eustace responsible for what he said when he was out of his senses."
"It is harder still," I said, "to resist his mother when she is pleading for 
him. Dearest and best of friends! I don't hold Eustace responsible for what he 
said in the fever--but I do take warning by it. The wildest words that fell from 
him were, one and all, the faithful echo of what he said to me in the best days 
of his health and his strength. What hope have I that he will recover with an 
altered mind toward me? Absence has not changed it; suffering has not changed 
it. In the delirium of fever, and in the full possession of his reason, he has 
the same dreadful doubt of me. I see but one way of winning him back: I must 
destroy at its root his motive for leaving me. It is hopeless to persuade him 
that I believe in his innocence: I must show him that belief is no longer 
necessary; I must prove to him that his position toward me has become the 
position of an innocent man!"
"Valeria! Valeria! you are wasting time and words. You have tried the 
experiment; and you know as well as I do that the thing is not to be done."
I had no answer to that. I could say no more than I had said already.
"Suppose you go back to Dexter, out of sheer compassion for a mad and miserable 
wretch who has already insulted you," proceeded my mother-in-law. "You can only 
go back accompanied by me, or by some other trustworthy person. You can only 
stay long enough to humor the creature's wayward fancy, and to keep his crazy 
brain quiet for a time. That done, all is done--you leave him. Even supposing 
Dexter to be still capable of helping you, how can you make use of him but by 
admitting him to terms of confidence and familiarity--by treating him, in short, 
on the footing of an intimate friend? Answer me honestly: can you bring yourself 
to do that, after what happened at Mr. Benjamin's house?"
I had told her of my last interview with Miserrimus Dexter, in the natural 
confidence that she inspired in me as relative and fellow-traveler; and this was 
the use to which she turned her information! I suppose I had no right to blame 
her; I suppose the motive sanctioned everything. At any rate, I had no choice 
but to give offense or to give an answer. I gave it. I acknowledged that I could 
never again permit Miserrimus Dexter to treat me on terms of familiarity as a 
trusted and intimate friend.
Mrs. Macallan pitilessly pressed the advantage that she had won.
"Very well," she said, "that resource being no longer open to you, what hope is 
left? Which way are you to turn next?"
There was no meeting those questions, in my present situation, by any adequate 
reply. I felt strangely unlike myself--I submitted in silence. Mrs. Macallan 
struck the last blow that completed her victory.
"My poor Eustace is weak and wayward," she said; "but he is not an ungrateful 
man. My child, you have returned him good for evil--you have proved how 
faithfully and how devotedly you love him, by suffering all hardships and 
risking all dangers for his sake. Trust me, and trust him! He cannot resist you. 
Let him see the dear face that he has been dreaming of looking at him again with 
all the old love in it, and he is yours once more, my daughter--yours for life." 
She rose and touched my forehead with her lips; her voice sank to tones of 
tenderness which I had never heard from her yet. "Say yes, Valeria," she 
whispered; "and be dearer to me and dearer to him than ever!"
My heart sided with her. My energies were worn out. No letter had arrived from 
Mr. Playmore to guide and to encourage me. I had resisted so long and so vainly; 
I had tried and suffered so much; I had met with such cruel disasters and such 
reiterated disappointments--and he was in the room beneath me, feebly finding 
his way back to consciousness and to life--how could I resist? It was all over. 
In saying Yes (if Eustace confirmed his mother's confidence in him), I was 
saying adieu to the one cherished ambition, the one dear and noble hope of my 
life. I knew it--and I said Yes.
And so good-by to the grand struggle! And so welcome to the new resignation 
which owned that I had failed.



My mother-in-law and I slept together under the only shelter that the inn could 
offer to us--a sort of loft at the top of the house. The night that followed our 
conversation was bitterly cold. We felt the chilly temperature, in spite of the 
protection of our dressing-gowns and our traveling-wrappers. My mother-in-law 
slept, but no rest came to me. I was too anxious and too wretched, thinking over 
my changed position, and doubting how my husband would receive me, to be able to 
sleep.
Some hours, as I suppose, must have passed, and I was still absorbed in my own 
melancholy thoughts, when I suddenly became conscious of a new and strange 
sensation which astonished and alarmed me. I started up in the bed, breathless 
and bewildered. The movement awakened Mrs. Macallan. "Are you ill?" she asked. 
"What is the matter with you?" I tried to tell her, as well as I could. She 
seemed to understand me before I had done; she took me tenderly in her arms, and 
pressed me to her bosom. "My poor innocent child," she said, "is it possible you 
don't know? Must I really tell you?" She whispered her next words. Shall I ever 
forget the tumult of feelings which the whisper aroused in me--the strange 
medley of joy and fear, and wonder and relief, and pride and humility, which 
filled my whole being, and made a new woman of me from that moment? Now, for the 
first time, I knew it! If God spared me for a few months more, the most enduring 
and the most sacred of all human joys might be mine--the joy of being a mother.
I don't know how the rest of the night passed. I only find my memory again when 
the morning came, and when I went out by myself to breathe the crisp wintry air 
on the open moor behind the inn.
I have said that I felt like a new woman. The morning found me with a new 
resolution and a new courage. When I thought of the future, I had not only my 
husband to consider now. His good name was no longer his own and mine--it might 
soon become the most precious inheritance that he could leave to his child. What 
had I done while I was in ignorance of this? I had resigned the hope of 
cleansing his name from the stain that rested on it--a stain still, no matter 
how little it might look in the eye of the Law. Our child might live to hear 
malicious tongues say, "Your father was tried for the vilest of all murders, and 
was never absolutely acquitted of the charge." Could I face the glorious perils 
of childbirth with that possibility present to my mind? No! not until I had made 
one more effort to lay the conscience of Miserrimus Dexter bare to my view! not 
until I had once again renewed the struggle, and brought the truth that 
vindicated the husband and the father to the light of day!
I went back to the house, with my new courage to sustain me. I opened my heart 
to my friend and mother, and told her frankly of the change that had come over 
me since we had last spoken of Eustace.
She was more than disappointed--she was almost offended with me. The one thing 
needful had happened, she said. The happiness that might soon come to us would 
form a new tie between my husband and me. Every other consideration but this she 
treated as purely fanciful. If I left Eustace now, I did a heartless thing and a 
foolish thing. I should regret, to the end of my days, having thrown away the 
one golden opportunity of my married life.
It cost me a hard struggle, it oppressed me with many a painful doubt; but I 
held firm this time. The honor of the father, the inheritance of the child--I 
kept these thoughts as constantly as possible before my mind. Sometimes they 
failed me, and left me nothing better than a poor fool who had some fitful 
bursts of crying, and was always ashamed of herself afterward. But my native 
obstinacy (as Mrs. Macallan said) carried me through. Now and then I had a peep 
at Eustace, while he was asleep; and that helped me too. Though they made my 
heart ache and shook me sadly at the times those furtive visits to my husband 
fortified me afterward. I cannot explain how this happened (it seems so 
contradictory); I can only repeat it as one of my experiences at that troubled 
time.
I made one concession to Mrs. Macallan--I consented to wait for two days before 
I took any steps for returning to England, on the chance that my mind might 
change in the interval.
It was well for me that I yielded so far. On the second day the director of the 
field-hospital sent to the post-office at our nearest town for letters addressed 
to him or to his care. The messenger brought back a letter for me. I thought I 
recognized the handwriting, and I was right. Mr. Playmore's answer had reached 
me at last!
If I had been in any danger of changing my mind, the good lawyer would have 
saved me in the nick of time. The extract that follows contains the pith of his 
letter; and shows how he encouraged me when I stood in sore need of a few 
cheering and friendly words.
"Let me now tell you," he wrote, "what I have done toward verifying the 
conclusion to which your letter points.
"I have traced one of the servants who was appointed to keep watch in the 
corridor on the night when the first Mrs. Eustace died at Glen inch. The man 
perfectly remembers that Miserrimus Dexter suddenly appeared before him and his 
fellow-servant long after the house was quiet for the night. Dexter said to 
them, 'I suppose there is no harm in my going into the study to read? I can't 
sleep after what has happened; I must relieve my mind somehow.' The men had no 
orders to keep any one out of the study. They knew that the door of 
communication with the bedchamber was locked, and that the keys of the two other 
doors of communication were in the possession of Mr. Gale. They accordingly 
permitted Dexter to go into the study. He closed the door (the door that opened 
on the corridor), and remained absent for some time--in the study as the men 
supposed; in the bedchamber as we know from what he let out at his interview 
with you. Now he could enter that room, as you rightly imagine, in but one 
way--by being in possession of the missing key. How long he remained there I 
cannot discover. The point is of little consequence. The servant remembers that 
he came out of the study again 'as pale as death,' and that he passed on without 
a word on his way back to his own room.
"These are facts. The conclusion to which they lead is serious in the last 
degree. It justifies everything that I confided to you in my office at 
Edinburgh. You remember what passed between us. I say no more.
"As to yourself next. You have innocently aroused in Miserrimus Dexter a feeling 
toward you which I need not attempt to characterize. There is a certain 
something--I saw it myself--in your figure, and in some of your movements, which 
does recall the late Mrs. Eustace to those who knew her well, and which has 
evidently had its effect on Dexter's morbid mind. Without dwelling further on 
this subject, let me only remind you that he has shown himself (as a consequence 
of your influence over him) to be incapable, in his moments of agitation, of 
thinking before he speaks while he is in your presence. It is not merely 
possible, it is highly probable, that he may betray himself far more seriously 
than he has betrayed himself yet if you give him the opportunity. I owe it to 
you (knowing what your interests are) to express myself plainly on this point. I 
have no sort of doubt that you have advanced one step nearer to the end which 
you have in view in the brief interval since you left Edinburgh. I see in your 
letter (and in my discoveries) irresistible evidence that Dexter must have been 
in secret communication with the deceased lady (innocent communication, I am 
certain, so far as she was concerned), not only at the time of her death, but 
perhaps for weeks before it. I cannot disguise from myself or from you, my own 
strong persuasion that if you succeed in discovering the nature of this 
communication, in all human likelihood you prove your husband's innocence by the 
discovery of the truth. As an honest man, I am bound not to conceal this. And, 
as an honest man also, I am equally bound to add that, not even with your reward 
in view, can I find it in my conscience to advise you to risk what you must risk 
if you see Miserrimus Dexter again. In this difficult and delicate matter I 
cannot and will not take the responsibility: the final decision must rest with 
yourself. One favor only I entreat you to grant--let me hear what you resolve to 
do as soon as you know it yourself."
The difficulties which my worthy correspondent felt were no difficulties to me. 
I did not possess Mr. Playmore's judicial mind. My resolution was settled before 
I had read his letter through.
The mail to France crossed the frontier the next day. There was a place for me, 
under the protection of the conductor, if I chose to take it. Without consulting 
a living creature--rash as usual, headlong as usual--I took it.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ON THE JOURNEY BACK.



IF I had been traveling homeward in my own carriage, the remaining chapters of 
this narrative would never have been written. Before we had been an hour on the 
road I should have called to the driver, and should have told him to turn back.
Who can be always resolute?
In asking that question, I speak of the women, not of the men. I had been 
resolute in turning a deaf ear to Mr. Playmore's doubts and cautions; resolute 
in holding out against my mother-in-law; resolute in taking my place by the 
French mail. Until ten minutes after we had driven away from the inn my courage 
held out--and then it failed me; then I said to myself, "You wretch, you have 
deserted your husband!" For hours afterward, if I could have stopped the mail, I 
would have done it. I hated the conductor, the kindest of men. I hated the 
Spanish ponies that drew us, the cheeriest animals that ever jingled a string of 
bells. I hated the bright day that would make things pleasant, and the bracing 
air that forced me to feel the luxury of breathing whether I liked it or not. 
Never was a journey more miserable than my safe and easy journey to the 
frontier. But one little comfort helped me to bear my heart-ache resignedly--a 
stolen morsel of Eustace's hair. We had started at an hour of the morning when 
he was still sound asleep. I could creep into his room, and kiss him, and cry 
over him softly, and cut off a stray lock of his hair, without danger of 
discovery. How I summoned resolution enough to leave him is, to this hour, not 
clear to my mind. I think my mother-in-law must have helped me, without meaning 
to do it. She came into the room with an erect head and a cold eye; she said, 
with an unmerciful emphasis on the word, "If you mean to go, Valeria, the 
carriage is here." Any woman with a spark of spirit in her would have "meant" it 
under those circumstances. I meant it--and did it.
And then I was sorry for it. Poor humanity! Time has got all the credit of being 
the great consoler of afflicted mortals. In my opinion, Time has been overrated 
in this matter. Distance does the same beneficent work far more speedily, and 
(when assisted by Change) far more effectually as well. On the railroad to 
Paris, I became capable of taking a sensible view of my position. I could now 
remind myself that my husband's reception of me--after the first surprise and 
the first happiness had passed away--might not have justified his mother's 
confidence in him. Admitting that I ran a risk in going back to Miserrimus 
Dexter, should I not have been equally rash, in another way, if I had returned, 
uninvited, to a husband who had declared that our conjugal happiness was 
impossible, and that our married life was at an end? Besides, who could say that 
the events of the future might not yet justify me--not only to myself, but to 
him? I might yet hear him say, "She was inquisitive when she had no business to 
inquire; she was obstinate when she ought; to have listened to reason; she left 
my bedside when other women would have remained; but in the end she atoned for 
it all--she turned out to be right!"
I rested a day at Paris and wrote three letters.
One to Benjamin, telling him to expect me the next evening. One to Mr. Playmore, 
warning him, in good time, that I meant to make a last effort to penetrate the 
mystery at Gleninch. One to Eustace (of a few lines only), owning that I had 
helped to nurse him through the dangerous part of his illness; confessing the 
one reason which had prevailed with me to leave him; and entreating him to 
suspend his opinion of me until time had proved that I loved him more dearly 
than ever. This last letter I inclosed to my mother-in-law, leaving it to her 
discretion to choose the right time for giving it to her son. I positively 
forbade Mrs. Macallan, however, to tell Eustace of the new tie between us. 
Although he had separated himself from me, I was determined that he should not 
hear it from other lips than mine. Never mind why. There are certain little 
matters which I must keep to myself; and this is one of them.
My letters being written, my duty was done. I was free to play my last card in 
the game--the darkly doubtful game which was neither quite for me nor quite 
against me as the chances now stood.



CHAPTER XXXIX.
ON THE WAY TO DEXTER.



"I DECLARE to Heaven, Valeria, I believe that monster's madness is 
infectious--and you have caught it!"
This was Benjamin's opinion of me (on my safe arrival at the villa) after I had 
announced my intention of returning Miserrimus Dexter's visit, in his company.
Being determined to carry my point, I could afford to try the influence of mild 
persuasion. I begged my good friend to have a little patience with me. "And do 
remember what I have already told you," I added. "It is of serious importance to 
me to see Dexter again."
I only heaped fuel on the fire. "See him again?" Benjamin repeated indignantly. 
"See him, after he grossly insulted you, under my roof, in this very room? I 
can't be awake; I must be asleep and dreaming!"
It was wrong of me, I know. But Benjamin's virtuous indignation was so very 
virtuous that it let the spirit of mischief loose in me. I really could not 
resist the temptation to outrage his sense of propriety by taking an audaciously 
liberal view of the whole matter.
"Gently, my good friend, gently," I said. "We must make allowances for a man who 
suffers under Dexter's infirmities, and lives Dexter's life. And really we must 
not let our modesty lead us beyond reasonable limits. I begin to think that I 
took rather a prudish view of the thing myself at the time. A woman who respects 
herself, and whose whole heart is with her husband, is not so very seriously 
injured when a wretched crippled creature is rude enough to put his arm around 
her waist. Virtuous indignation (if I may venture to say so) is sometimes very 
cheap indignation. Besides, I have forgiven him--and you must forgive him too. 
There is no fear of his forgetting himself again, while you are with me. His 
house is quite a curiosity--it is sure to interest you; the pictures alone are 
worth the journey. I will write to him to-day, and we will go and see him 
together to-morrow. We owe it to ourselves (if we don't owe it to Mr. Dexter) to 
pay this visit. If you will look about you, Benjamin, you will see that 
benevolence toward everybody is the great virtue of the time we live in. Poor 
Mr. Dexter must have the benefit of the prevailing fashion. Come, come, march 
with the age! Open your mind to the new ideas!"
Instead of accepting this polite invitation, worthy old Benjamin flew at the age 
we lived in like a bull at a red cloth.
"Oh, the new ideas! the new ideas! By all manner of means, Valeria, let us have 
the new ideas! The old morality's all wrong, the old ways are all worn out. 
Let's march with the age we live in. Nothing comes amiss to the age we live in. 
The wife in England and the husband in Spain, married or not married living 
together or not living together--it's all one to the new ideas. I'll go with 
you, Valeria; I'll be worthy of the generation I live in. When we have done with 
Dexter, don't let's do things by halves. Let's go and get crammed with ready 
made science at a lecture--let's hear the last new professor, the man who has 
been behind the scenes at Creation, and knows to a T how the world was made, and 
how long it took to make it. There's the other fellow, too: mind we don't forget 
the modern Solomon, who has left his proverbs behind him--the brand-new 
philosopher who considers the consolations of religion in the light of harmless 
playthings, and who is kind enough to say that he might have been all the 
happier if he could only have been childish enough to play with them himself. 
Oh, the new ideas! the new ideas!--what consoling, elevating, beautiful 
discoveries have been made by the new ideas! We were all monkeys before we were 
men, and molecules before we were monkeys! and what does it matter? And what 
does anything matter to anybody? I'm with you, Valeria, I'm ready. The sooner 
the better. Come to Dexter! Come to Dexter!"
"I am so glad you agree with me," I said. "But let us do nothing in a hurry. 
Three o'clock to-morrow will be time enough for Mr. Dexter. I will write at once 
and tell him to expect us. Where are you going?"
"I am going to clear my mind of cant," said Benjamin, sternly. "I am going into 
the library."
"What are you going to read?"
"I am going to read--Puss in Boots, and Jack and the Bean-stalk, and anything 
else I can find that doesn't march with the age we live in."
With that parting shot at the new ideas, my old friend left me for a time.
Having dispatched my note, I found myself beginning to revert, with a certain 
feeling of anxiety, to the subject of Miserrimus Dexter's health. How had he 
passed through the interval of my absence from England? Could anybody, within my 
reach, tell me news of him? To inquire of Benjamin would only be to provoke a 
new outbreak. While I was still considering, the housekeeper entered the room on 
some domestic errand. I asked, at a venture, if she had heard anything more, 
while I had been away of the extraordinary person who had so seriously alarmed 
her on a former occasion.
The housekeeper shook her head, and looked as if she thought it in bad taste to 
mention the subject at all.
"About a week after you had gone away ma'am," she said, with extreme severity of 
manner, and with excessive carefulness in her choice of words, "the Person you 
mention had the impudence to send a letter to you. The messenger was informed, 
by my master's orders, that you had gone abroad, and he and his letter were both 
sent about their business together. Not long afterward, ma'am, I happened, while 
drinking tea with Mrs. Macallan's housekeeper, to hear of the Person again. He 
himself called in his chaise, at Mrs. Macallan's, to inquire about you there. 
How he can contrive to sit, without legs to balance him, is beyond my 
understanding--but that is neither here nor there. Legs or no legs, the 
housekeeper saw him, and she says, as I say, she will never forget him to her 
dying day. She told him (as soon as she recovered herself) of Mr. Eustace's 
illness, and of you and Mrs. Macallan being in foreign parts nursing him. He 
went away, so the housekeeper told me, with tears in his eyes, and oaths and 
curses on his lips--a sight shocking to see. That's all I know about the Person, 
ma'am, and I hope to be excused if I venture to say that the subject is (for 
good reasons) extremely disagreeable to me."
She made a formal courtesy, and quitted the room.
Left by myself, I felt more anxious and more uncertain than ever when I thought 
of the experiment that was to be tried on the next day. Making due allowance for 
exaggeration, the description of Miserrimus Dexter on his departure from Mrs. 
Macallan's house suggested that he had not endured my long absence very 
patiently, and that he was still as far as ever from giving his shattered 
nervous system its fair chance of repose.
The next morning brought me Mr. Playmore's reply to the letter which I had 
addressed to him from Paris.
He wrote very briefly, neither approving nor blaming my decision, but strongly 
reiterating his opinion that I should do well to choose a competent witness as 
my companion at my coming interview with Dexter. The most interesting part of 
the letter was at the end. "You must be prepared," Mr. Playmore wrote, "to see a 
change for the worse in Dexter. A friend of mine was with him on a matter of 
business a few days since, and was struck by the alteration in him. Your 
presence is sure to have its effect, one way or another. I can give you no 
instructions for managing him--you must be guided by the circumstances. Your own 
tact will tell you whether it is wise or not to encourage him to speak of the 
late Mrs. Eustace. The chances of his betraying himself all revolve (as I think) 
round that one topic: keep him to it if you can." To this was added, in a 
postscript: "Ask Mr. Benjamin if he were near enough to the library door to hear 
Dexter tell you of his entering the bedchamber on the night of Mrs. Eustace 
Macallan's death."
I put the question to Benjamin when we met at the luncheon-table before setting 
forth for the distant suburb in which Miserrimus Dexter lived. My old friend 
disapproved of the contemplated expedition as strongly as ever. He was unusually 
grave and unusually sparing of his words when he answered me.
"I am no listener," he said. "But some people have voices which insist on being 
heard. Mr. Dexter is one of them."
"Does that mean that you heard him?" I asked.
"The door couldn't muffle him, and the wall couldn't muffle him," Benjamin 
rejoined. "I heard him--and I thought it infamous. There!"
"I may want you to do more than hear him this time," I ventured to say. "I may 
want you to make notes of our conversation while Mr. Dexter is speaking to me. 
You used to write down what my father said, when he was dictating his letters to 
you. Have you got one of your little note-books to spare?"
Benjamin looked up from his plate with an aspect of stern surprise.
"It's one thing," he said, "to write under the dictation of a great merchant, 
conducting a vast correspondence by which thousands of pounds change hands in 
due course of post. And it's another thing to take down the gibberish of a 
maundering mad monster who ought to be kept in a cage. Your good father, 
Valeria, would never have asked me to do that."
"Forgive me, Benjamin; I must really ask you to do it. You may be of the 
greatest possible use to me. Come, give way this once, dear, for my sake."
Benjamin looked down again at his plate, with a rueful resignation which told me 
that I had carried my point.
"I have been tied to her apron-string all my life," I heard him grumble to 
himself; "and it's too late in the day to get loose from her how." He looked up 
again at me. "I thought I had retired from business," he said; "but it seems I 
must turn clerk again. Well? What is the new stroke of work that's expected from 
me this time?"
The cab was announced to be waiting for us at the gate as he asked the question. 
I rose and took his arm, and gave him a grateful kiss on his rosy old cheek.
"Only two things," I said. "Sit down behind Mr. Dexter's chair, so that he can't 
see you. But take care to place yourself, at the same time, so that you can see 
me."
"The less I see of Mr. Dexter the better I shall be pleased," growled Benjamin. 
"What am I to do after I have taken my place behind him?"
"You are to wait until I make you a sign; and when you see it you are to begin 
writing down in your note-book what Mr. Dexter is saying--and you are to go on 
until I make another sign, which means, Leave off!"
"Well?" said Benjamin, "what's the sign for Begin? and what's the sign for Leave 
off?"
I was not quite prepared with an answer to this. I asked him to help me with a 
hint. No! Benjamin would take no active part in the matter. He was resigned to 
be employed in the capacity of passive instrument--and there all concession 
ended, so far as he was concerned.
Left to my own resources, I found it no easy matter to invent a telegraphic 
system which should sufficiently inform Benjamin, without awakening Dexter's 
quick suspicion. I looked into the glass to see if I could find the necessary 
suggestion in anything that I wore. My earrings supplied me with the idea of 
which I was in search.
"I shall take care to sit in an arm-chair," I said. "When you see me rest my 
elbow on the chair, and lift my hand to my earring, as if I were playing with 
it--write down what he says; and go on until--well, suppose we say, until you 
hear me move my chair. At that sound, stop. You understand me?"
"I understand you."
We started for Dexter's house.



CHAPTER XL.
NEMESIS AT LAST.



THE gardener opened the gate to us on this occasion. He had evidently received 
his orders in anticipation of my arrival.
"Mrs. Valeria?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And friend?"
"And friend."
"Please to step upstairs. You know the house."
Crossing the hall, I stopped for a moment, and looked at a favorite walking-cane 
which Benjamin still kept in his hand.
"Your cane will only be in your way," I said. "Had you not better leave it 
here?"
"My cane may be useful upstairs," retorted Benjamin, gruffly. "I haven't 
forgotten what happened in the library."
It was no time to contend with him. I led the way up the stairs.
Arriving at the upper flight of steps, I was startled by hearing a sudden cry 
from the room above. It was like the cry of a person in pain; and it was twice 
repeated before we entered the circular antechamber. I was the first to approach 
the inner room, and to see the many-sided Miserrimus Dexter in another new 
aspect of his character.
The unfortunate Ariel was standing before a table, with a dish of little cakes 
placed in front of her. Round each of her wrists was tied a string, the free 
ends of which (at a distance of a few yards) were held in Miserrimus Dexter's 
hands. "Try again, my beauty!" I heard him say, as I stopped on the threshold of 
the door. "Take a cake." At the word of command, Ariel submissively stretched 
out one arm toward the dish. Just as she touched a cake with the tips of her 
fingers her hand was jerked away by a pull at the string, so savagely cruel in 
the nimble and devilish violence of it that I felt inclined to snatch Benjamin's 
cane out of his hand and break it over Miserrimus Dexter's back. Ariel suffered 
the pain this time in Spartan silence. The position in which she stood enabled 
her to be the first to see me at the door. She had discovered me. Her teeth were 
set; her face was flushed under the struggle to restrain herself. Not even a 
sigh escaped her in my presence.
"Drop the string!" I called out, indignantly "Release her, Mr. Dexter, or I 
shall leave the house."
At the sound of my voice he burst out with a shrill cry of welcome. His eyes 
fastened on me with a fierce, devouring delight.
"Come in! come in!" he cried. "See what I am reduced to in the maddening 
suspense of waiting for you. See how I kill the time when the time parts us. 
Come in! come in! I am in one of my malicious humors this morning, caused 
entirely, Mrs. Valeria, by my anxiety to see you. When I am in my malicious 
humors I must tease something. I am teasing Ariel. Look at her! She has had 
nothing to eat all day, and she hasn't been quick enough to snatch a morsel of 
cake yet. You needn't pity her. Ariel has no nerves--I don't hurt her."
"Ariel has no nerves," echoed the poor creature, frowning at me for interfering 
between her master and herself. "He doesn't hurt me."
I heard Benjamin beginning to swing his cane behind him.
"Drop the string!" I reiterated, more vehemently than ever. "Drop it, or I shall 
instantly leave you."
Miserrimus Dexter's delicate nerves shuddered at my violence. "What a glorious 
voice!" he exclaimed--and dropped the string. "Take the cakes," he added, 
addressing Ariel in his most imperial manner.
She passed me, with the strings hanging from her swollen wrists, and the dish of 
cakes in her hand. She nodded her head at me defiantly.
"Ariel has got no nerves," she repeated, proudly. "He doesn't hurt me."
"You see," said Miserrimus Dexter, "there is no harm done--and I dropped the 
strings when you told me. Don't begin by being hard on me, Mrs. Valeria, after 
your long absence." He paused. Benjamin, standing silent in the doorway, 
attracted his attention for the first time. "Who is this?" he asked, and wheeled 
his chair suspiciously nearer to the door. "I know!" he cried, before I could 
answer. "This is the benevolent gentleman who looked like the refuge of the 
afflicted when I saw him last.--You have altered for the worse since then, sir. 
You have stepped into quite a new character--you personify Retributive Justice 
now.--Your new protector, Mrs. Valeria--I understand!" He bowed low to Benjamin, 
with ferocious irony. "Your humble servant, Mr. Retributive Justice! I have 
deserved you--and I submit to you. Walk in, sir! I will take care that your new 
office shall be a sinecure. This lady is the Light of my Life. Catch me failing 
in respect to her if you can!" He backed his chair before Benjamin (who listened 
to him in contemptuous silence) until he reached the part of the room in which I 
was standing. "Your hand, Light of my Life!" he murmured in his gentlest tones. 
"Your hand--only to show that you have forgiven me!" I gave him my hand. "One?" 
he whispered, entreatingly. "Only one?" He kissed my hand once, 
respectfully--and dropped it with a heavy sigh. "Ah, poor Dexter!" he said, 
pitying himself with the whole sincerity of his egotism. "A warm heart--wasted 
in solitude, mocked by deformity. Sad! sad! Ah, poor Dexter!" He looked round 
again at Benjamin, with another flash of his ferocious irony. "A beauteous day, 
sir," he said, with mock-conventional courtesy. "Seasonable weather indeed after 
the late long-continued rains. Can I offer you any refreshment? Won't you sit 
down? Retributive Justice, when it is no taller than you are, looks best in a 
chair."
"And a monkey looks best in a cage," rejoined Benjamin, enraged at the satirical 
reference to his shortness of stature. "I was waiting, sir, to see you get into 
your swing."
The retort produced no effect on Miserrimus Dexter: it appeared to have passed 
by him unheard. He had changed again; he was thoughtful, he was subdued; his 
eyes were fixed on me with a sad and rapt attention. I took the nearest 
arm-chair, first casting a glance at Benjamin, which he immediately understood. 
He placed himself behind Dexter, at an angle which commanded a view of my chair. 
Ariel, silently devouring her cakes, crouched on a stool at "the Master's" feet, 
and looked up at him like a faithful dog. There was an interval of quiet and 
repose. I was able to observe Miserrimus Dexter uninterruptedly for the first 
time since I had entered the room.
I was not surprised--I was nothing less than alarmed by the change for the worse 
in him since we had last met. Mr. Playmore's letter had not prepared me for the 
serious deterioration in him which I could now discern.
His features were pinched and worn; the whole face seemed to have wasted 
strangely in substance and size since I had last seen it. The softness in his 
eyes was gone. Blood-red veins were intertwined all over them now: they were set 
in a piteous and vacant stare. His once firm hands looked withered; they 
trembled as they lay on the coverlet. The paleness of his face (exaggerated, 
perhaps, by the black velvet jacket that he wore) had a sodden and sickly 
look--the fine outline was gone. The multitudinous little wrinkles at the 
corners of his eyes had deepened. His head sank into his shoulders when he 
leaned forward in his chair. Years appeared to have passed over him, instead of 
months, while I had been absent from England. Remembering the medical report 
which Mr. Playmore had given me to read--recalling the doctor's positively 
declared opinion that the preservation of Dexter's sanity depended on the 
healthy condition of his nerves--I could not but feel that I had done wisely (if 
I might still hope for success) in hastening my return from Spain. Knowing what 
I knew, fearing what I feared, I believed that his time was near. I felt, when 
our eyes met by accident, that I was looking at a doomed man.
I pitied him.
Yes, yes! I know that compassion for him was utterly inconsistent with the 
motive which had taken me to his house--utterly inconsistent with the doubt, 
still present to my mind, whether Mr. Playmore had really wronged him in 
believing that his was the guilt which had compassed the first Mrs. Eustace's 
death. I felt this: I knew him to be cruel; I believed him to be false. And yet 
I pitied him! Is there a common fund of wickedness in us all? Is the suppression 
or the development of that wickedness a mere question of training and 
temptation? And is there something in our deeper sympathies which mutely 
acknowledges this when we feel for the wicked; when we crowd to a criminal 
trial; when we shake hands at parting (if we happen to be present officially) 
with the vilest monster that ever swung on a gallows? It is not for me to 
decide. I can only say that I pitied Miserrimus Dexter--and that he found it 
out.
"Thank you," he said, suddenly. "You see I am ill, and you feel for me. Dear and 
good Valeria!"
"This lady's name, sir, is Mrs. Eustace Macallan," interposed Benjamin, speaking 
sternly behind him. "The next time you address her, remember, if you please, 
that you have no business with her Christian name."
Benjamin's rebuke passed, like Benjamin's retort, unheeded and unheard. To all 
appearance, Miserrimus Dexter had completely forgotten that there was such a 
person in the room.
"You have delighted me with the sight of you," he went on. "Add to the pleasure 
by letting me hear your voice. Talk to me of yourself. Tell me what you have 
been doing since you left England."
It was necessary to my object to set the conversation afloat; and this was as 
good a way of doing it as any other. I told him plainly how I had been employed 
during my absence.
"So you are still fond of Eustace?" he said, bitterly.
"I love him more dearly than ever."
He lifted his hands, and hid his face. After waiting a while, he went on, 
speaking in an odd, muffled manner, still under cover of his hands.
"And you leave Eustace in Spain," he said; "and you return to England by 
yourself! What made you do that?"
"What made me first come here and ask you to help me, Mr. Dexter?"
He dropped his hands, and looked at me. I saw in his eyes, not amazement only, 
but alarm.
"Is it possible," he exclaimed, "that you won't let that miserable matter rest 
even yet? Are you still determined to penetrate the mystery at Gleninch?"
"I am still determined, Mr. Dexter; and I still hope that you may be able to 
help me."
The old distrust that I remembered so well darkened again over his face the 
moment I said those words.
"How can I help you?" he asked. "Can I alter facts?" He stopped. His face 
brightened again, as if some sudden sense of relief had come to him. "I did try 
to help you," he went on. "I told you that Mrs. Beauly's absence was a device to 
screen herself from suspicion; I told you that the poison might have been given 
by Mrs. Beauly's maid. Has reflection convinced you? Do you see something in the 
idea?"
This return to Mrs. Beauly gave me my first chance of leading the talk to the 
right topic.
"I see nothing in the idea," I answered. "I see no motive. Had the maid any 
reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace?"
"Nobody had any reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace!" he broke out, 
loudly and vehemently. "She was all goodness, all kindness; she never injured 
any human creature in thought or deed. She was a saint upon earth. Respect her 
memory! Let the martyr rest in her grave!" He covered his face again with his 
hands, and shook and shuddered under the paroxysm of emotion that I had roused 
in him.
Ariel suddenly and softly left her stool, and approached me.
"Do you see my ten claws?" she whispered, holding out her hands. "Vex the Master 
again, and you will feel my ten claws on your throat!"
Benjamin rose from his seat: he had seen the action, without hearing the words. 
I signed to him to keep his place. Ariel returned to her stool, and looked up 
again at her master.
"Don't cry," she said. "Come on. Here are the strings. Tease me again. Make me 
screech with the smart of it."
He never answered, and never moved.
Ariel bent her slow mind to meet the difficulty of attracting his attention. I 
saw it in her frowning brows, in her colorless eyes looking at me vacantly. On a 
sudden, she joyfully struck the open palm of one of her hands with the fist of 
the other. She had triumphed. She had got an idea.
"Master!" she cried. "Master! You haven't told me a story for ever so long. 
Puzzle my thick head. Make my flesh creep. Come on. A good long story. All blood 
and crimes."
Had she accidentally hit on the right suggestion to strike his wayward fancy? I 
knew his high opinion of his own skill in "dramatic narrative." I knew that one 
of his favorite amusements was to puzzle Ariel by telling her stories that she 
could not understand. Would he wander away into the regions of wild romance? Or 
would he remember that my obstinacy still threatened him with reopening the 
inquiry into the tragedy at Gleninch? and would he set his cunning at work to 
mislead me by some new stratagem? This latter course was the course which my 
past experience of him suggested that he would take. But, to my surprise and 
alarm, I found my past experience at fault. Ariel succeeded in diverting his 
mind from the subject which had been in full possession of it the moment before 
she spoke! He showed his face again. It was overspread by a broad smile of 
gratified self-esteem. He was weak enough now to let even Ariel find her way to 
his vanity. I saw it with a sense of misgiving, with a doubt whether I had not 
delayed my visit until too late, which turned me cold from head to foot.
Miserrimus Dexter spoke--to Ariel, not to me.
"Poor devil!" he said, patting her head complacently. "You don't understand a 
word of my stories, do you? And yet I can make the flesh creep on your great 
clumsy body--and yet I can hold your muddled mind, and make you like it. Poor 
devil!" He leaned back serenely in his chair, and looked my way again. Would the 
sight of me remind him of the words that had passed between us not a minute 
since? No! There was the pleasantly tickled self-conceit smiling at me exactly 
as it had smiled at Ariel. "I excel in dramatic narrative, Mrs. Valeria," he 
said. "And this creature here on the stool is a remarkable proof of it. She is 
quite a psychological study when I tell her one of my stories. It is really 
amusing to see the half-witted wretch's desperate efforts to understand me. You 
shall have a specimen. I have been out of spirits while you were away--I haven't 
told her a story for weeks past; I will tell her one now. Don't suppose it's any 
effort to me! My invention is inexhaustible. You are sure to be amused--you are 
naturally serious--but you are sure to be amused. I am naturally serious too; 
and I always laugh at her."
Ariel clapped her great shapeless hands. "He always laughs at me!" she said, 
with a proud look of superiority directed straight at me.
I was at a loss, seriously at a loss, what to do.
The outbreak which I had provoked in leading him to speak of the late Mrs. 
Eustace warned me to be careful, and to wait for my opportunity before I 
reverted to that subject. How else could I turn the conversation so as to lead 
him, little by little, toward the betrayal of the secrets which he was keeping 
from me? In this uncertainty, one thing only seemed to be plain. To let him tell 
his story would be simply to let him waste the precious minutes. With a vivid 
remembrance of Ariel's "ten claws," I decided, nevertheless on discouraging 
Dexter's new whim at every possible opportunity and by every means in my power.
"Now, Mrs. Valeria," he began, loudly and loftily, "listen. Now, Ariel, bring 
your brains to a focus. I improvise poetry; I improvise fiction. We will begin 
with the good old formula of the fairy stories. Once upon a time--"
I was waiting for my opportunity to interrupt him when he interrupted himself. 
He stopped, with a bewildered look. He put his hand to his head, and passed it 
backward and forward over his forehead. He laughed feebly.
"I seem to want rousing," he said
Was his mind gone.? There had been no signs of it until I had unhappily stirred 
his memory of the dead mistress of Gleninch. Was the weakness which I had 
already noticed, was the bewilderment which I now saw, attributable to the 
influence of a passing disturbance only? In other words, had I witnessed nothing 
more serious than a first warning to him and to us? Would he soon recover 
himself, if we were patient, and gave him time? Even Benjamin was interested at 
last; I saw him trying to look at Dexter around the corner of the chair. Even 
Ariel was surprised and uneasy. She had no dark glances to cast at me now.
We all waited to see what he would do, to hear what he would say, next.
"My harp!" he cried. "Music will rouse me."
Ariel brought him his harp.
"Master," she said, wonderingly, "what's come to you?"
He waved his hand, commanding her to be silent.
"Ode to Invention," he announced, loftily, addressing himself to me. "Poetry and 
music improvised by Dexter. Silence! Attention!"
His fingers wandered feebly over the harpstrings, awakening no melody, 
suggesting no words. In a little while his hand dropped; his head sank forward 
gently, and rested on the frame of the harp. I started to my feet, and 
approached him. Was it a sleep? or was it a swoon?
I touched his arm, and called to him by his name.
Ariel instantly stepped between us, with a threatening look at me. At the same 
moment Miserrimus Dexter raised his head. My voice had reached him. He looked at 
me with a curious contemplative quietness in his eyes which I had never seen in 
them before.
"Take away the harp," he said to Ariel, speaking in languid tones, like a man 
who was very weary.
The mischievous, half-witted creature--in sheer stupidity or in downright 
malice, I am not sure which--irritated him once more.
"Why, Master?" she asked, staring at him with the harp hugged in her arms. 
"What's come to you? where is the story?"
"We don't want the story," I interposed. "I have many things to say to Mr. 
Dexter which I have not said yet."
Ariel lifted her heavy hand. "You will have it!" she said, and advanced toward 
me. At the same moment the Master's voice stopped her.
"Put away the harp, you fool!" he repeated, sternly. "And wait for the story 
until I choose to tell it."
She took the harp submissively back to its place at the end of the room. 
Miserrimus Dexter moved his chair a little closer to mine. "I know what will 
rouse me," he said, confidentially. "Exercise will do it. I have had no exercise 
lately. Wait a little, and you will see."
He put his hands on the machinery of the chair, and started on his customary 
course down the room. Here again the ominous change in him showed itself under a 
new form. The pace at which he traveled was not the furious pace that I 
remembered; the chair no longer rushed under him on rumbling and whistling 
wheels. It went, but it went slowly. Up the room and down the room he painfully 
urged it--and then he stopped for want of breath.
We followed him. Ariel was first, and Benjamin was by my side. He motioned 
impatiently to both of them to stand back, and to let me approach him alone.
"I'm out of practice," he said, faintly. "I hadn't the heart to make the wheels 
roar and the floor tremble while you were away."
Who would not have pitied him? Who would have remembered his misdeeds at that 
moment? Even Ariel felt it. I heard her beginning to whine and whimper behind 
me. The magician who alone could rouse the dormant sensibilities in her nature 
had awakened them now by his neglect. Her fatal cry was heard again, in 
mournful, moaning tones--
"What's come to you, Master? Where's the story?"
"Never mind her," I whispered to him. "You want the fresh air. Send for the 
gardener. Let us take a drive in your pony-chaise."
It was useless. Ariel would be noticed. The mournful cry came once more--
"Where's the story? where's the story?"
The sinking spirit leaped up in Dexter again.
"You wretch! you fiend!" he cried, whirling his chair around, and facing her. 
"The story is coming. I can tell it! I will tell it! Wine! You whimpering idiot, 
get me the wine. Why didn't I think of it before? The kingly Burgundy! that's 
what I want, Valeria, to set my invention alight and flaming in my head. Glasses 
for everybody! Honor to the King of the Vintages--the Royal Clos Vougeot!"
Ariel opened the cupboard in the alcove, and produced the wine and the high 
Venetian glasses. Dexter drained his gobletful of Burgundy at a draught; he 
forced us to drink (or at least to pretend to drink) with him. Even Ariel had 
her share this time, and emptied her glass in rivalry with her master. The 
powerful wine mounted almost instantly to her weak head. She began to sing 
hoarsely a song of her own devising, in imitation of Dexter. It was nothing but 
the repetition, the endless mechanical repetition, of her demand for the 
story--"Tell us the story. Master! master! tell us the story!" Absorbed over his 
wine, the Master silently filled his goblet for the second time. Benjamin 
whispered to me while his eye was off us, "Take my advice, Valeria, for once; 
let us go."
"One last effort," I whispered back. "Only one!"
Ariel went drowsily on with her song--
"Tell us the story. Master! master! tell us the story."
Miserrimus Dexter looked up from his glass. The generous stimulant was beginning 
to do its work. I saw the color rising in his face. I saw the bright 
intelligence flashing again in his eyes. The Burgundy had roused him! The good 
wine stood my friend, and offered me a last chance!
"No story," I said. "I want to talk to you, Mr. Dexter. I am not in the humor 
for a story."
"Not in the humor?" he repeated, with a gleam of the old impish irony showing 
itself again in his face. "That's an excuse. I see what it is! You think my 
invention is gone--and you are not frank enough to confess it. I'll show you 
you're wrong. I'll show you that Dexter is himself again. Silence, you Ariel, or 
you shall leave the room! I have got it, Mrs. Valeria, all laid out here, with 
scenes and characters complete." He touched his forehead, and looked at me with 
a furtive and smiling cunning before he added his next words. "It's the very 
thing to interest you, my fair friend. It's the story of a Mistress and a Maid. 
Come back to the fire and hear it."
The Story of a Mistress and a Maid? If that meant anything, it meant the story 
of Mrs. Beauly and her maid, told in disguise.
The title, and the look which had escaped him when he announced it, revived the 
hope that was well-nigh dead in me. He had rallied at last. He was again in 
possession of his natural foresight and his natural cunning. Under pretense of 
telling Ariel her story, he was evidently about to make the attempt to mislead 
me for the second time. The conclusion was irresistible. To use his own 
words--Dexter was himself again.
I took Benjamin's arm as we followed him back to the fire-place in the middle of 
the room.
"There is a chance for me yet," I whispered. "Don't forget the signals."
We returned to the places which we had already occupied. Ariel cast another 
threatening look at me. She had just sense enough left, after emptying her 
goblet of wine, to be on the watch for a new interruption on my part. I took 
care, of course, that nothing of the sort should happen. I was now as eager as 
Ariel to hear the story. The subject was full of snares for the narrator. At any 
moment, in the excitement of speaking, Dexter's memory of the true events might 
show itself reflected in the circumstances of the fiction. At any moment he 
might betray himself.
He looked around him, and began.
"My public, are you seated? My public, are you ready?" he asked, gayly. "Your 
face a little more this way," he added, in his softest and tenderest tones, 
motioning to me to turn my full face toward him. "Surely I am not asking too 
much? You look at the meanest creature that crawls--look at Me. Let me find my 
inspiration in your eyes. Let me feed my hungry admiration on your form. Come, 
have one little pitying smile left for the man whose happiness you have wrecked. 
Thank you, Light of my Life, thank you!" He kissed his hand to me, and threw 
himself back luxuriously in his chair. "The story," he resumed. "The story at 
last! In what form shall I cast it? In the dramatic form--the oldest way, the 
truest way, the shortest way of telling a story! Title first. A short title, a 
taking title: 'Mistress and Maid.' Scene, the land of romance--Italy. Time, the 
age of romance--the fifteenth century. Ha! look at Ariel. She knows no more 
about the fifteenth century than the cat in the kitchen, and yet she is 
interested already. Happy Ariel!"
Ariel looked at me again, in the double intoxication of the wine and the 
triumph.
"I know no more than the cat in the kitchen," she repeated, with a broad grin of 
gratified vanity. "I am 'happy Ariel!' What are you?"
Miserrimus Dexter laughed uproariously.
"Didn't I tell you?" he said. "Isn't she fun?--Persons of the Drama." he 
resumed: "three in number. Women only. Angelica, a noble lady; noble alike in 
spirit and in birth. Cunegonda, a beautiful devil in woman's form. Damoride, her 
unfortunate maid. First scene: a dark vaulted chamber in a castle. Time, 
evening. The owls are hooting in the wood; the frogs are croaking in the 
marsh.--Look at Ariel! Her flesh creeps; she shudders audibly. Admirable Ariel!"
My rival in the Master's favor eyed me defiantly. "Admirable Ariel!" she 
repeated, in drowsy accents. Miserrimus Dexter paused to take up his goblet of 
Burgundy--placed close at hand on a little sliding table attached to his chair. 
I watched him narrowly as he sipped the wine. The flush was still mounting in 
his face; the light was still brightening in his eyes. He set down his glass 
again, with a jovial smack of his lips--and went on:
"Persons present in the vaulted chamber: Cunegonda and Damoride. Cunegonda 
speaks. 'Damoride!' 'Madam?' 'Who lies ill in the chamber above us?' 'Madam, the 
noble lady Angelica.' (A pause. Cunegonda speaks again.) 'Damoride!' ' Madam?' 
'How does Angelica like you?' 'Madam, the noble lady, sweet and good to all who 
approach her, is sweet and good to me.' 'Have you attended on her, Damoride?' 
'Sometimes, madam, when the nurse was weary.' 'Has she taken her healing 
medicine from your hand ' 'Once or twice, madam, when I happened to be by.' 
'Damoride, take this key and open the casket on the table there.' (Damoride 
obeys.) 'Do you see a green vial in the casket?' 'I see it, madam.' 'Take it 
out.' (Damoride obeys.) 'Do you see a liquid in the green vial? can you guess 
what it is?' 'No, madam.' 'Shall I tell you?' (Damoride bows respectfully ) 
'Poison is in the vial.' (Damoride starts; she shrinks from the poison; she 
would fain put it aside. Her mistress signs to her to keep it in her hand; her 
mistress speaks.) 'Damoride, I have told you one of my secrets; shall I tell you 
another?' (Damoride waits, fearing what is to come. Her mistress speaks.) 'I 
hate the Lady Angelica. Her life stands between me and the joy of my heart. You 
hold her life in your hand.' (Damoride drops on her knees; she is a devout 
person; she crosses herself, and then she speaks.) 'Mistress, you terrify me. 
Mistress, what do I hear?' (Cunegonda advances, stands over her, looks down on 
her with terrible eyes, whispers the next words.) 'Damoride! the Lady Angelica 
must die--and I must not be suspected. The Lady Angelica must die--and by your 
hand.'"
He paused again. To sip the wine once more? No; to drink a deep draught of it 
this time.
Was the stimulant beginning to fail him already?
I looked at him attentively as he laid himself back again in his chair to 
consider for a moment before he went on.
The flush on his face was as deep as ever; but the brightness in his eyes was 
beginning to fade already. I had noticed that he spoke more and more slowly as 
he advanced to the later dialogue of the scene. Was he feeling the effort of 
invention already? Had the time come when the wine had done all that the wine 
could do for him?
We waited. Ariel sat watching him with vacantly staring eyes and vacantly open 
mouth. Benjamin, impenetrably expecting the signal, kept his open note-book on 
his knee, covered by his hand. Miserrimus Dexter went on:
"Damoride hears those terrible words; Damoride clasps her hands in entreaty. 
'Oh, madam! madam! how can I kill the dear and noble lady? What motive have I 
for harming her?' Cunegonda answers, 'You have the motive of obeying Me.' 
(Damoride falls with her face on the floor at her mistress's feet.) 'Madam, I 
cannot do it! Madam, I dare not do it!' Cunegonda answers, 'You run no risk: I 
have my plan for diverting discovery from myself, and my plan for diverting 
discovery from you.' Damoride repeats, 'I cannot do it! I dare not do it!' 
Cunegonda's eyes flash lightnings of rage. She takes from its place of 
concealment in her bosom--"
He stopped in the middle of the sentence, and put his hand to his head--not like 
a man in pain, but like a man who had lost his idea.
Would it be well if I tried to help him to recover his idea? or would it be 
wiser (if I could only do it) to keep silence?
I could see the drift of his story plainly enough. His object, under the thin 
disguise of the Italian romance, was to meet my unanswerable objection to 
suspecting Mrs. Beauly's maid--the objection that the woman had no motive for 
committing herself to an act of murder. If he could practically contradict this, 
by discovering a motive which I should be obliged to admit, his end would be 
gained. Those inquiries which I had pledged myself to pursue--those inquiries 
which might, at any moment, take a turn that directly concerned him--would, in 
that case, be successfully diverted from the right to the wrong person. The 
innocent maid would set my strictest scrutiny at defiance; and Dexter would be 
safely shielded behind her.
I determined to give him time. Not a word passed my lips.
The minutes followed each other. I waited in the deepest anxiety. It was a 
trying and a critical moment. If he succeeded in inventing a probable motive, 
and in shaping it neatly to suit the purpose of his story, he would prove, by 
that act alone, that there were reserves of mental power still left in him which 
the practiced eye of the Scotch doctor had failed to see. But the question 
was--would he do it?
He did it! Not in a new way; not in a convincing way; not without a painfully 
evident effort. Still, well done or ill done, he found a motive for the maid.
"Cunegonda," he resumed, "takes from its place of concealment in her bosom a 
written paper, and unfolds it. 'Look at this,' she says. Damoride looks at the 
paper, and sinks again at her mistress's feet in a paroxysm of horror and 
despair. Cunegonda is in possession of a shameful secret in the maid's past 
life. Cunegonda can say to her, 'Choose your alternative. Either submit to an 
exposure which disgraces you and--disgraces your parents forever--or make up 
your mind to obey Me.' Damoride might submit to the disgrace if it only affected 
herself. But her parents are honest people; she cannot disgrace her parents. She 
is driven to her last refuge--there is no hope of melting the hard heart of 
Cunegonda. Her only resource is to raise difficulties; she tries to show that 
there are obstacles between her and the crime. 'Madam! madam!' she cries; 'how 
can I do it, when the nurse is there to see me?' Cunegonda answers, 'Sometimes 
the nurse sleeps; sometimes the nurse is away.' Damoride still persists. 'Madam! 
madam! the door is kept locked, and the nurse has got the key.'"
The key! I instantly thought of the missing key at Gleninch. Had he thought of 
it too? He certainly checked himself as the word escaped him. I resolved to make 
the signal. I rested my elbow on the arm of my chair, and played with my 
earring. Benjamin took out his pencil and arranged his note-book so that Ariel 
could not see what he was about if she happened to look his way.
We waited until it pleased Miserrimus Dexter to proceed. The interval was a long 
one. His hand went up again to his forehead. A duller and duller look was 
palpably stealing over his eyes. When he did speak, it was not to go on with the 
narrative, but to put a question.
"Where did I leave off?" he asked.
My hopes sank again as rapidly as they had risen. I managed to answer him, 
however, without showing any change in my ,manner.
"You left off," I said, "where Damoride was speaking to Cunegonda--"
"Yes, yes!" he interposed. "And what did she say?"
"She said, 'The door is kept locked, and the nurse has got the key.'"
He instantly leaned forward in his chair.
"No!" he answered, vehemently. "You're wrong. 'Key?' Nonsense! I never said 
'Key.'"
"I thought you did, Mr. Dexter."
"I never did! I said something else, and you have forgotten it."
I refrained from disputing with him, in fear of what might follow. We waited 
again. Benjamin, sullenly submitting to my caprices, had taken down the 
questions and answers that had passed between Dexter and myself. He still 
mechanically kept his page open, and still held his pencil in readiness to go 
on. Ariel, quietly submitting to the drowsy influence of the wine while Dexter's 
voice was in her ears, felt uneasily the change to silence. She glanced round 
her restlessly; she lifted her eyes to "the Master."
There he sat, silent, with his hand to his head, still struggling to marshal his 
wandering thoughts, still trying to see light through the darkness that was 
closing round him.
"Master!" cried Ariel, piteously. "What's become of the story?"
He started as if she had awakened him out of a sleep; he shook his head 
impatiently, as though he wanted to throw off some oppression that weighed upon 
it.
"Patience, patience," he said. "The story is going on again."
He dashed at it desperately; he picked up the first lost thread that fell in his 
way, reckless whether it were the right thread or the wrong one:
"Damoride fell on her knees. She burst into tears. She said--"
He stopped, and looked about him with vacant eyes.
"What name did I give the other woman?" he asked, not putting the question to 
me, or to either of my companions: asking it of himself, or asking it of the 
empty air.
"You called the other woman Cunegonda," I said.
At the sound of my voice his eyes turned slowly--turned on me, and yet failed to 
look at me. Dull and absent, still and changeless, they were eyes that seemed to 
be fixed on something far away. Even his voice was altered when he spoke next. 
It had dropped to a quiet, vacant, monotonous tone. I had heard something like 
it while I was watching by my husband's bedside, at the time of his 
delirium--when Eustace's mind appeared to be too weary to follow his speech. Was 
the end so near as this?
"I called her Cunegonda," he repeated. "And I called the other--"
He stopped once more.
"And you called the other Damoride," I said.
Ariel looked up at him with a broad stare of bewilderment. She pulled 
impatiently at the sleeve of his jacket to attract his notice.
"Is this the story, Master?" she asked.
He answered without looking at her, his changeless eyes still fixed, as it 
seemed, on something far away.
"This is the story," he said, absently. "But why Cunegonda? why Damoride? Why 
not Mistress and Maid? It's easier to remember Mistress and Maid--"
He hesitated; he shivered as he tried to raise himself in his chair. Then he 
seemed to rally "What did the Maid say to the Mistress?" he muttered. "What? 
what? what?" He hesitated again. Then something seemed to dawn upon him 
unexpectedly. Was it some new thought that had struck him? or some lost thought 
that he had recovered? Impossible to say.
He went on, suddenly and rapidly went on, in these strange words:
"'The letter,' the Maid said; 'the letter. Oh my heart. Every word a dagger. A 
dagger in my heart. Oh, you letter. Horrible, horrible, horrible letter.'"
What, in God's name, was he talking about? What did those words mean?
Was he unconsciously pursuing his faint and fragmentary recollections of a past 
time at Gleninch, under the delusion that he was going on with the story? In the 
wreck of the other faculties, was memory the last to sink? Was the truth, the 
dreadful truth, glimmering on me dimly through the awful shadow cast before it 
by the advancing, eclipse of the brain? My breath failed me; a nameless horror 
crept through my whole being.
Benjamin, with his pencil in his hand, cast one warning look at me. Ariel was 
quiet and satisfied. "Go on, Master," was all she said. "I like it! I like it! 
Go on with the story."
He went on--like a man sleeping with his eyes open, and talking in his sleep.
"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid. The Mistress 
said, 'Show him the letter. Must, must, must do it.' The Maid said, 'No. Mustn't 
do it. Shan't show it. Stuff. Nonsense. Let him suffer. We can get him off. Show 
it? No. Let the worst come to the worst. Show it, then.' The Mistress said--" He 
paused, and waved his hand rapidly to and fro before his eyes, as if he were 
brushing away some visionary confusion or entanglement. "Which was it last?" he 
said--"Mistress or Maid? Mistress? No. Maid speaks, of course. Loud. Positive. 
'You scoundrels. Keep away from that table. The Diary's there. Number Nine, 
Caldershaws. Ask for Dandie. You shan't have the Diary. A secret in your ear. 
The Diary will hang, him. I won't have him hanged. How dare you touch my chair? 
My chair is Me! How dare you touch Me?'"
The last words burst on me like a gleam of light! I had read them in the Report 
of the Trial--in the evidence of the sheriff's officer. Miserrimus Dexter had 
spoken in those very terms when he had tried vainly to prevent the men from 
seizing my husband's papers, and when the men had pushed his chair out of the 
room. There was no doubt now of what his memory was busy with. The mystery at 
Gleninch! His last backward flight of thought circled feebly and more feebly 
nearer and nearer to the mystery at Gleninch!
Ariel aroused him again. She had no mercy on him; she insisted on hearing the 
whole story.
"Why do you stop, Master? Get along with it! get along with it! Tell us 
quick--what did the Missus say to the Maid?"
He laughed feebly, and tried to imitate her.
"'What did the Missus say to the Maid?'" he repeated. His laugh died away. He 
went on speaking, more and more vacantly, more and more rapidly. "The Mistress 
said to the Maid. We've got him off. What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire 
in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone. Tear 
it up. Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up. Waste paper. 
Throw it away. Gone forever. Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara! Gone forever.'"
Ariel clapped her hands, and mimicked him in her turn.
"'Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara!'" she repeated. "'Gone forever.' That's prime, Master! 
Tell us--who was Sara?"
His lips moved, but his voice sank so low that I could barely hear him. He began 
again, with the old melancholy refrain:
"The Maid said to the Mistress. No--the Mistress said to the Maid--" He stopped 
abruptly, and raised himself erect in the chair; he threw up both his hands 
above his head, and burst into a frightful screaming laugh. "Aha-ha-ha-ha! How 
funny! Why don't you laugh? Funny, funny, funny, funny. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha--"
He fell back in the chair. The shrill and dreadful laugh died away into a low 
sob. Then there was one long, deep, wearily drawn breath. Then nothing but a 
mute, vacant face turned up to the ceiling, with eyes that looked blindly, with 
lips parted in a senseless, changeless grin. Nemesis at last! The foretold doom 
had fallen on him. The night had come.



But one feeling animated me when the first shock was over. Even the horror of 
that fearful sight seemed only to increase the pity that I felt for the stricken 
wretch. I started impulsively to my feet. Seeing nothing, thinking of nothing 
but the helpless figure in the chair, I sprang forward to raise him, to revive 
him, to recall him (if such a thing might still be possible) to himself. At the 
first step that I took, I felt hands on me--I was violently drawn back. "Are you 
blind?" cried Benjamin, dragging me nearer and nearer to the door. "Look there!"
He pointed; and I looked.
Ariel had been beforehand with me. She had raised her master in the chair; she 
had got one arm around him. In her free hand she brandished an Indian club, torn 
from a "trophy" of Oriental weapons that ornamented the wall over the 
fire-place. The creature was transfigured! Her dull eyes glared like the eyes of 
a wild animal. She gnashed her teeth in the frenzy that possessed her. "You have 
done this!" she shouted to me, waving the club furiously around and around over 
her head. "Come near him, and I'll dash your brains out! I'll mash you till 
there's not a whole bone left in your skin!" Benjamin, still holding me with one 
hand opened the door with the other. I let him do with me as he would; Ariel 
fascinated me; I could look at nothing but Ariel. Her frenzy vanished as she saw 
us retreating. She dropped the club; she threw both arms around him, and nestled 
her head on his bosom, and sobbed and wept over him. "Master! master! They 
shan't vex you any more. Look up again. Laugh at me as you used to do. Say, 
'Ariel, you're a fool.' Be like yourself again!" I was forced into the next 
room. I heard a long, low, wailing cry of misery from the poor creature who 
loved him with a dog's fidelity and a woman's devotion. The heavy door was 
closed between us. I was in the quiet antechamber, crying over that piteous 
sight; clinging to my kind old friend as helpless and as useless as a child.
Benjamin turned the key in the lock.
"There's no use in crying about it," he said, quietly. "It would be more to the 
purpose, Valeria, if you thanked God that you have got out of that room safe and 
sound. Come with me."
He took the key out of the lock, and led me downstairs into the hall. After a 
little consideration, he opened the front door of the house. The gardener was 
still quietly at work in the grounds.
"Your master is taken ill," Benjamin said; "and the woman who attends upon him 
has lost her head--if she ever had a head to lose. Where does the nearest doctor 
live?"
The man's devotion to Dexter showed itself as the woman's devotion had shown 
itself--in the man's rough way. He threw down his spade with an oath.
"The Master taken bad?" he said. "I'll fetch the doctor. I shall find him sooner 
than you will."
"Tell the doctor to bring a man with him," Benjamin added. "He may want help."
The gardener turned around sternly.
"I'm the man," he said. "Nobody shall help but me."
He left us. I sat down on one of the chairs in the hall, and did my best to 
compose myself. Benjamin walked to and fro, deep in thought. "Both of them fond 
of him," I heard my old friend say to himself. "Half monkey, half man--and both 
of them fond of him. That beats me."
The gardener returned with the doctor--a quiet, dark, resolute man. Benjamin 
advanced to meet them. "I have got the key," he said. "Shall I go upstairs with 
you?"
Without answering, the doctor drew Benjamin aside into a corner of the hall. The 
two talked together in low voices. At the end of it the doctor said, "Give me 
the key. You can be of no use; you will only irritate her."
With those words he beckoned to the gardener. He was about to lead the way up 
the stairs when I ventured to stop him.
"May I stay in the hall, sir?" I said. "I am very anxious to hear how it ends."
He looked at me for a moment before he replied.
"You had better go home, madam," he said. "Is the gardener acquainted with your 
address?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. I will let you know how it ends by means of the gardener. Take my 
advice. Go home."
Benjamin placed my arm in his. I looked back, and saw the doctor and the 
gardener ascending the stairs together on their way to the locked-up room.
"Never mind the doctor," I whispered. "Let's wait in the garden."
Benjamin would not hear of deceiving the doctor. "I mean to take you home," he 
said. I looked at him in amazement. My old friend, who was all meekness and 
submission so long as there was no emergency to try him, now showed the dormant 
reserve of manly spirit and decision in his nature as he had never (in my 
experience) shown it yet. He led me into the garden. We had kept our cab: it was 
waiting for us at the gate.
On our way home Benjamin produced his note-book.
"What's to be done, my dear, with the gibberish that I have written here?" he 
said.
"Have you written it all down?" I asked, in surprise.
"When I undertake a duty, I do it," he answered. "You never gave me the signal 
to leave off--you never moved your chair. I have written every word of it. What 
shall I do? Throw it out of the cab window?"
"Give it to me."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I don't know yet. I will ask Mr. Playmore."



CHAPTER XLI.
MR. PLAYMORE IN A NEW CHARACTER.



BY that night's post--although I was far from being fit to make the exertion--I 
wrote to Mr. Playmore, to tell him what had taken place, and to beg for his 
earliest assistance and advice.
The notes in Benjamin's book were partly written in shorthand, and were, on that 
account, of no use to me in their existing condition. At my request, he made two 
fair copies. One of the copies I inclosed in my letter to Mr. Playmore. The 
other I laid by me, on my bedside table, when I went to rest.
Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read and 
re-read the last words which had dropped from Miserrimus Dexter's lips. Was it 
possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed 
to set interpretation at defiance. After trying vainly to solve the hopeless 
problem, I did at last what I might as well have done at first--I threw down the 
paper in despair. Where were my bright visions of discovery and success now? 
Scattered to the winds! Was there the faintest chance of the stricken man's 
return to reason? I remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The 
closing lines of the medical report which I had read in Mr. Playmore's office 
recurred to my memory in the stillness of the night--"When the catastrophe has 
happened, his friends can entertain no hope of his cure: the balance once lost, 
will be lost for life."
The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in reaching me. On the 
next morning the gardener brought a note containing the information which the 
doctor had promised to give me on the previous day.
Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and I had left them 
together--in the long room. They were watched by skilled attendants, waiting the 
decision of Dexter's nearest relative (a younger brother, who lived in the 
country, and who had been communicated with by telegraph. It had been found 
impossible to part the faithful Ariel from her master without using the bodily 
restraints adopted in cases of raging insanity. The doctor and the gardener 
(both unusually strong men) had failed to hold the poor creature when they first 
attempted to remove her on entering the room. Directly they permitted her to 
return to her master the frenzy vanished: she was perfectly quiet and contented 
so long as they let her sit at his feet and look at him.
Sad as this was, the report of Miserrimus Dexter's condition was more melancholy 
still.
"My patient is in a state of absolute imbecility"--those were the words in the 
doctor's letter; and the gardener's simple narrative confirmed them as the 
truest words that could have been used. He was utterly unconscious of poor 
Ariel's devotion to him--he did not even appear to know that she was present in 
the room. For hours together he remained in a state of utter lethargy in his 
chair. He showed an animal interest in his meals, and a greedy animal enjoyment 
of eating and drinking as much as he could get--and that was all. "This 
morning," the honest gardener said to me at parting, "we thought he seemed to 
wake up a bit. Looked about him, you know, and made queer signs with his hands. 
I couldn't make out what he meant; no more could the doctor. She knew, poor 
thing--She did. Went and got him his harp, and put his hand up to it. Lord bless 
you! no use. He couldn't play no more than I can. Twanged at it anyhow, and 
grinned and gabbled to himself. No: he'll never come right again. Any person can 
see that, without the doctor to help 'em. Enjoys his meals, as I told you; and 
that's all. It would be the best thing that could happen if it would please God 
to take him. There's no more to be said. I wish you good-morning, ma'am."
He went away with the tears in his eyes; and he left me, I own it, with the 
tears in mine.
An hour later there came some news which revived me. I received a telegram from 
Mr. Playmore, expressed in these welcome words: "Obliged to go to London by 
to-night's mail train. Expect me to breakfast to-morrow morning." 



The appearance of the lawyer at our breakfast-table duly followed the appearance 
of his telegram. His first words cheered me. To my infinite surprise and relief, 
he was far from sharing the despondent view which I took of my position.
"I don't deny," he said, "that there are some serious obstacles in your way. But 
I should never have called here before attending to my professional business in 
London if Mr. Benjamin's notes had not produced a very strong impression on my 
mind. For the first time, as I think, you really have a prospect of success. For 
the first time, I feel justified in offering (under certain restrictions) to 
help you. That miserable wretch, in the collapse of his intelligence, has done 
what he would never have done in the possession of his sense and his cunning--he 
has let us see the first precious glimmerings of the light of truth."
"Are you sure it is the truth?" I asked.
"In two important particulars," he answered, "I know it to be the truth. Your 
idea about him is the right one. His memory (as you suppose) was the least 
injured of his faculties, and was the last to give way under the strain of 
trying to tell that story. I believe his memory to have been speaking to you 
(unconsciously to himself) in all that he said from the moment when the first 
reference to 'the letter' escaped him to the end."
"But what does the reference to the letter mean?" I asked. "For my part, I am 
entirely in the dark about it."
"So am I," he answered, frankly. "The chief one among the obstacles which I 
mentioned just now is the obstacle presented by that same 'letter.' The late 
Mrs. Eustace must have been connected with it in some way, or Dexter would never 
have spoken of it as 'a dagger in his heart'; Dexter would never have coupled 
her name with the words which describe the tearing up of the letter and the 
throwing of it away. I can arrive with some certainty at this result, and I can 
get no further. I have no more idea than you have of who wrote the letter, or of 
what was written in it. If we are ever to make that discovery--probably the most 
important discovery of all--we must dispatch our first inquiries a distance of 
three thousand miles. In plain English, my dear lady, we must send to America."
This, naturally enough, took me completely by surprise. I waited eagerly to hear 
why we were to send to America.
"It rests with you," he proceeded, "when you hear what I have to tell you, to 
say whether you will go to the expense of sending a man to New York, or not. I 
can find the right man for the purpose; and I estimate the expense (including a 
telegram)--"
"Never mind the expense!" I interposed, losing all patience with the eminently 
Scotch view of the case which put my purse in the first place of importance. "I 
don't care for the expense; I want to know what you have discovered."
He smiled. "She doesn't care for the expense," he said to himself, pleasantly. 
"How like a woman!"
I might have retorted, "He thinks of the expense before he thinks of anything 
else. How like a Scotchman!" As it was, I was too anxious to be witty. I only 
drummed impatiently with my fingers on the table, and said, "Tell me! tell me!"
He took out the fair copy from Benjamin's note-book which I had sent to him, and 
showed me these among Dexter's closing words: "What about the letter? Burn it 
now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants 
all gone."
"Do you really understand what those words mean?" I asked.
"I look back into my own experience," he answered, "and I understand perfectly 
what the words mean."
"And can you make me understand them too?"
"Easily. In those incomprehensible sentences Dexter's memory has correctly 
recalled certain facts. I have only to tell you the facts, and you will be as 
wise as I am. At the time of the Trial, your husband surprised and distressed me 
by insisting on the instant dismissal of all the household servants at Gleninch. 
I was instructed to pay them a quarter's wages in advance, to give them the 
excellent written characters which their good conduct thoroughly deserved, and 
to see the house clear of them at an hour's notice. Eustace's motive for this 
summary proceeding was much the same motive which animated his conduct toward 
you. 'If I am ever to return to Gleninch,' he said, 'I cannot face my honest 
servants after the infamy of having stood my trial for murder.' There was his 
reason. Nothing that I could say to him, poor fellow, shook his resolution. I 
dismissed the servants accordingly. At an hour's notice, they quitted the house, 
leaving their work for the day all undone. The only persons placed in charge of 
Gleninch were persons who lived on the outskirts of the park--that is to say, 
the lodge-keeper and his wife and daughter. On the last day of the Trial I 
instructed the daughter to do her best to make the rooms tidy. She was a good 
girl enough, but she had no experience as a housemaid: it would never enter her 
head to lay the bedroom fires ready for lighting, or to replenish the empty 
match-boxes. Those chance words that dropped from Dexter would, no doubt, 
exactly describe the state of his room when he returned to Gleninch, with the 
prisoner and his mother, from Edinburgh. That he tore up the mysterious letter 
in his bedroom, and (finding no means immediately at hand for burning it) that 
he threw the fragments into the empty grate, or into the waste-paper basket, 
seems to be the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw from what we know. 
In any case, he would not have much time to think about it. Everything was done 
in a hurry on that day. Eustace and his mother, accompanied by Dexter, left for 
England the same evening by the night train. I myself locked up the house, and 
gave the keys to the lodge-keeper. It was understood that he was to look after 
the preservation of the reception-rooms on the ground-floor; and that his wife 
and daughter were to perform the same service between them in the rooms 
upstairs. On receiving your letter, I drove at once to Gleninch to question the 
old woman on the subject of the bedrooms, and of Dexter's room especially. She 
remembered the time when the house was shut up by associating it with the time 
when she was confined to her bed by an attack of sciatica. She had not crossed 
the lodge door, she was sure, for at least a week (if not longer after Gleninch 
had been left in charge of her husband and herself. Whatever was done in the way 
of keeping the bedrooms aired and tidy during her illness was done by her 
daughter. She, and she only, must have disposed of any letter which might have 
been lying about in Dexter's room. Not a vestige of torn paper, as I can myself 
certify, is to be discovered in any part of the room now. Where did the girl 
find the fragments of the letter? and what did she do with them? Those are the 
questions (if you approve of it) which we must send three thousand miles away to 
ask--for this sufficient reason, that the lodge-keeper's daughter was married 
more than a year since, and that she is settled with her husband in business at 
New York. It rests with you to decide what is to be done. Don't let me mislead 
you with false hopes! Don't let me tempt you to throw away your money! Even if 
this woman does remember what she did with the torn paper, the chances, at this 
distance of time, are enormously against our ever recovering a single morsel of 
it. Be in no haste to decide. I have my work to do in the city--I can give you 
the whole day to think it over."
"Send the man to New York by the next steamer," I said. "There is my decision, 
Mr. Playmore, without keeping you waiting for it!"
He shook his head, in grave disapproval of my impetuosity. In my former 
interview with him we had never once touched on the question of money. I was 
now, for the first time, to make acquaintance with Mr. Playmore on the purely 
Scotch side of his character.
"Why, you don't even know what it will cost you!" he exclaimed, taking out his 
pocket-book with the air of a man who was equally startled and scandalized. 
"Wait till I tot it up," he said, "in English and American money."
"I can't wait! I want to make more discoveries!"
He took no notice of my interruption; he went on impenetrably with his 
calculations.
"The man will go second-class, and will take a return-ticket. Very well. His 
ticket includes his food; and (being, thank God, a teetotaler) he won't waste 
your money in buying liquor on board. Arrived at New York, he will go to a cheap 
German house, where he will, as I am credibly informed, be boarded and lodged at 
the rate--"
By this time (my patience being completely worn out) I had taken my check-book 
from the table-drawer, had signed my name, and had handed the blank check across 
the table to my legal adviser.
"Fill it in with whatever the man wants," I said. "And for Heaven's sake let us 
get back to Dexter!"
Mr. Playmore fell back in his chair, and lifted his hands and eyes to the 
ceiling. I was not in the least impressed by that solemn appeal to the unseen 
powers of arithmetic and money. I insisted positively on being fed with more 
information.
"Listen to this," I went on, reading from Benjamin's notes. "What did Dexter 
mean when he said, 'Number Nine, Caldershaws. Ask for Dandie. You shan't have 
the Diary. A secret in your ear. The Diary will hang him?' How came Dexter to 
know what was in my husband's Diary? And what does he mean by 'Number Nine, 
Caldershaws,' and the rest of it? Facts again?"
"Facts again!" Mr. Playmore answered, "muddled up together, as you may say--but 
positive facts for all that. Caldershaws, you must know, is one of the most 
disreputable districts in Edinburgh. One of my clerks (whom I am in the habit of 
employing confidentially) volunteered to inquire for 'Dandie' at 'Number Nine.' 
It was a ticklish business in every way; and my man wisely took a person with 
him who was known in the neighborhood. 'Number Nine' turned out to be 
(ostensibly) a shop for the sale of rags and old iron; and 'Dandie' was 
suspected of trading now and then, additionally, as a receiver of stolen goods. 
Thanks to the influence of his companion, backed by a bank-note (which can be 
repaid, by the way, out of the fund for the American expenses), my clerk 
succeeded is making the fellow speak. Not to trouble you with needless details, 
the result in substance was this: A fortnight or more before the date of Mrs. 
Eustace's death, 'Dandie' made two keys from wax models supplied to him by a new 
customer. The mystery observed in the matter by the agent who managed it excited 
Dandie's distrust. He had the man privately watched before he delivered the 
keys; and he ended in discovering that his customer was--Miserrimus Dexter. Wait 
a little! I have not done yet. Add to this information Dexter's incomprehensible 
knowledge of the contents of your husband's diary, and the product is--that the 
wax models sent to the old-iron shop in Caldershaws were models taken by theft 
from the key of the Diary and the key of the table-drawer in which it was kept. 
I have my own idea of the revelations that are still to come if this matter is 
properly followed up. Never mind going into that at present. Dexter (I tell you 
again) is answerable for the late Mrs. Eustace's death. How he is answerable I 
believe you are in a fair way of finding out. And, more than that, I say now, 
what I could not venture to say before--it is a duty toward Justice, as well as 
a duty toward your husband, to bring the truth to light. As for the difficulties 
to be encountered, I don't think they need daunt you. The greatest difficulties 
give way in the end, when they are attacked by the united alliance of patience 
resolution--and economy."
With a strong emphasis on the last words, my worthy adviser, mindful of the 
flight of time and the claims of business, rose to take his leave.
"One word more," I said, as he held out his hand. "Can you manage to see 
Miserrimus Dexter before you go back to Edinburgh? From what the gardener told 
me, his brother must be with him by this time. It would be a relief to me to 
hear the latest news of him, and to hear it from you."
"It is part of my business in London to see him," said Mr. Playmore. "But mind! 
I have no hope of his recovery; I only wish to satisfy myself that his brother 
is able and willing to take care of him. So far as we are concerned, Mrs. 
Eustace, that unhappy man has said his last words."
He opened the door--stopped--considered--and come back to me.
"With regard to that matter of sending the agent to America," he resumed--"I 
propose to have the honor of submitting to you a brief abstract--"
"Oh, Mr. Playmore!"
"A brief abstract in writing, Mrs. Eustace, of the estimated expenses of the 
whole proceeding. You will be good enough maturely to consider the same, making 
any remarks on it, tending to economy, which may suggest themselves to your mind 
at the time. And you will further oblige me, if you approve of the abstract, by 
yourself filling in the blank space on your check with the needful amount in 
words and figures. No, madam! I really cannot justify it to my conscience to 
carry about my person any such loose and reckless document as a blank check. 
There's a total disregard of the first claims of prudence and economy implied in 
this small slip of paper which is nothing less than a flat contradiction of the 
principles that have governed my whole life. I can't submit to flat 
contradiction. Good-morning, Mrs. Eustace--good-morning."
He laid my check on the table with a low bow, and left me. Among the curious 
developments of human stupidity which occasionally present themselves to view, 
surely the least excusable is the stupidity which, to this day, persists in 
wondering why the Scotch succeed so well in life!



CHAPTER XLII.
MORE SURPRISES.



The same evening I received my "abstract" by the hands of a clerk.
It was an intensely characteristic document. My expenses were remorselessly 
calculated downward to shillings and even to pence; and our unfortunate 
messenger's instructions in respect to his expenditure were reduced to a nicety 
which must have made his life in America nothing less than a burden to him. In 
mercy to the man, I took the liberty, when I wrote back to Mr. Playmore, of 
slightly increasing the indicated amount of the figures which were to appear on 
the check. I ought to have better known the correspondent whom I had to deal 
with. Mr. Playmore's reply (informing me that our emissary had started on his 
voyage) returned a receipt in due form, and the whole of the surplus money, to 
the last farthing!
A few hurried lines accompanied the "abstract," and stated the result of the 
lawyer's visit to Miserrimus Dexter.
There was no change for the better--there was no change at all. Mr. Dexter, the 
brother, had arrived at the house accompanied by a medical man accustomed to the 
charge of the insane. The new doctor declined to give any definite opinion on 
the case until he had studied it carefully with plenty of time at his disposal. 
It had been accordingly arranged that he should remove Miserrimus Dexter to the 
asylum of which he was the proprietor as soon as the preparations for receiving 
the patient could be completed. The one difficulty that still remained to be met 
related to the disposal of the faithful creature who had never left her master, 
night or day, since the catastrophe had happened. Ariel had no friends and no 
money. The proprietor of the asylum could not be expected to receive her without 
the customary payment; and Mr. Dexter's brother "regretted to say that he was 
not rich enough to find the money." A forcible separation from the one human 
being whom she loved, and a removal in the character of a pauper to a public 
asylum--such was the prospect which awaited the unfortunate creature unless some 
one interfered in her favor before the end of the week.
Under these sad circumstances, good Mr. Playmore--passing over the claims of 
economy in favor of the claims of humanity--suggested that we should privately 
start a subscription, and offered to head the list liberally himself.
I must have written all these pages to very little purpose if it is necessary 
for me to add that I instantly sent a letter to Mr. Dexter, the brother, 
undertaking to be answerable for whatever money was to be required while the 
subscriptions were being collected, and only stipulating that when Miserrimus 
Dexter was removed to the asylum, Ariel should accompany him. This was readily 
conceded. But serious objections were raised when I further requested that she 
might be permitted to attend on her master in the asylum as she had attended on 
him in the house. The rules of the establishment forbade it, and the universal 
practice in such cases forbade it, and so on, and so on. However, by dint of 
perseverance and persuasion, I so far carried my point as to gain a reasonable 
concession. During certain hours in the day, and under certain wise 
restrictions, Ariel was to be allowed the privilege of waiting on the Master in 
his room, as well as of accompanying him when he was brought out in his chair to 
take the air in the garden. For the honor of humanity, let me add that the 
liability which I had undertaken made no very serious demands on my resources. 
Placed in Benjamin's charge, our subscription-list prospered. Friends, and even 
strangers sometimes, opened their hearts and their purses when they heard 
Ariel's melancholy story.



The day which followed the day of Mr. Playmore's visit brought me news from 
Spain, in a letter from my mother-in-law. To describe what I felt when I broke 
the seal and read the first lines is simply impossible. Let Mrs. Macallan be 
heard on this occasion in my place.
Thus she wrote:



"Prepare yourself, my dearest Valeria, for a delightful surprise. Eustace has 
justified my confidence in him. When he returns to England, he returns--if you 
will let him--to his wife.
"This resolution, let me hasten to assure you, has not been brought about by any 
persuasions of mine. It is the natural outgrowth of your husband's gratitude and 
your husband's love. The first words he said to me, when he was able to speak, 
were these: 'If I live to return to England, and if I go to Valeria, do you 
think she will forgive me?' We can only leave it to you, my dear, to give the 
answer. If you love us, answer us by return of post.
"Having now told you what he said when I first informed him that you had been 
his nurse--and remember, if it seem very little, that he is still too weak to 
speak except with difficulty--I shall purposely keep my letter back for a few 
days. My object is to give him time to think, and to frankly tell you of it if 
the interval produce any change in his resolution.
"Three days have passed, and there is no change. He has but one feeling now--he 
longs for the day which is to unite him again to his wife.
"But there is something else connected with Eustace that you ought to know, and 
that I ought to tell you.
"Greatly as time and suffering have altered him in many respects, there is no 
change, Valeria, in the aversion--the horror I may even say--with which he views 
your idea of inquiring anew into the circumstances which attended the lamentable 
death of his first wife. It makes no difference to him that you are only 
animated by a desire to serve his interests. 'Has she given up that idea? Are 
you positively sure she has given up that idea?' Over and over again he has put 
these questions to me. I have answered--what else could I do in the miserably 
feeble state in which he still lies?--I have answered in such a manner as to 
soothe and satisfy him. I have said, 'Relieve your mind of all anxiety on that 
subject: Valeria has no choice but to give up the idea; the obstacles in her way 
have proved to be insurmountable--the obstacles have conquered her.' This, if 
you remember, was what I really believed would happen when you and I spoke of 
that painful topic; and I have heard nothing from you since which has tended to 
shake my opinion in the smallest degree. If I am right (as I pray God I may be) 
in the view that I take, you have only to confirm me in your reply, and all will 
be well. In the other event--that is to say, if you are still determined to 
persevere in your hopeless project--then make up your mind to face the result. 
Set Eustace's prejudices at defiance in this particular, and you lose your hold 
on his gratitude, his penitence, and his love--you will, in my belief, never see 
him again.
"I express myself strongly, in your own interests, my dear, and for your own 
sake. When you reply, write a few lines to Eustace, inclosed in your letter to 
me.
"As for the date of our departure, it is still impossible for me to give you any 
definite information. Eustace recovers very slowly; the doctor has not yet 
allowed him to leave his bed; and when we do travel we must journey by easy 
stages. It will be at least six weeks, at the earliest, before we can hope to be 
back again in dear Old England.
"Affectionately yours,
"CATHERINE MACALLAN."



I laid down the letter, and did my best (vainly enough for some time) to compose 
my spirits. To understand the position in which I now found myself, it is only 
necessary to remember one circumstance: the messenger to whom we had committed 
our inquiries was at that moment crossing the Atlantic on his way to New York.
What was to be done?
I hesitated. Shocking as it may seem to some people, I hesitated. There was 
really no need to hurry my decision. I had the whole day before me.
I went out and took a wretched, lonely walk, and turned the matter over in my 
mind. I came home again, and turned the matter over once more by the fireside. 
To offend and repel my darling when he was returning to me, penitently returning 
of his own free will, was what no woman in my position, and feeling as I did, 
could under any earthly circumstances have brought herself to do. And yet. on 
the other hand, how in Heaven's name could I give up my grand enterprise at the 
very time when even wise and prudent Mr. Playmore saw such a prospect of 
succeeding in it that he had actually volunteered to help me? Placed between 
those two cruel alternatives, which could I choose? Think of your own frailties, 
and have some mercy on mine. I turned my back on both the alternatives. Those 
two agreeable fiends, Prevarication and Deceit, took me, as it were, softly by 
the hand: "Don't commit yourself either way, my dear," they said, in their most 
persuasive manner. "Write just enough to compose your mother-in-law and to 
satisfy your husband. You have got time before you. Wait and see if Time doesn't 
stand your friend, and get you out of the difficulty."
Infamous advice! And yet I took it--I, who had been well brought up, and who 
ought to have known better. You who read this shameful confession would have 
known better, I am sure. You are not included, in the Prayer-book category, 
among the "miserable sinners."
Well! well! let me have virtue enough to tell the truth. In writing to my 
mother-in-law, I informed her that it had been found necessary to remove 
Miserrimus Dexter to an asylum--and I left her to draw her own conclusions from 
that fact, unenlightened by so much as one word of additional information. In 
the same way, I told my husband a part of the truth, and no more. I said I 
forgave him with all my heart--and I did! I said he had only to come to me, and 
I would receive him with open arms--and so I would! As for the rest, let me say 
with Hamlet--"The rest is silence."
Having dispatched my unworthy letters, I found myself growing restless, and 
feeling the want of a change. It would be necessary to wait at least eight or 
nine days before we could hope to hear by telegraph from New York. I bade 
farewell for a time to my dear and admirable Benjamin, and betook myself to my 
old home in the North, at the vicarage of my uncle Starkweather. My journey to 
Spain to nurse Eustace had made my peace with my worthy relatives; we had 
exchanged friendly letters; and I had promised to be their guest as soon as it 
was possible for me to leave London.
I passed a quiet and (all things considered) a happy time among the old scenes. 
I visited once more the bank by the river-side, where Eustace and I had first 
met. I walked again on the lawn and loitered through the shrubbery--those 
favorite haunts in which we had so often talked over our troubles, and so often 
forgotten them in a kiss. How sadly and strangely had our lives been parted 
since that time! How uncertain still was the fortune which the future had in 
store for us!
The associations amid which I was now living had their softening effect on my 
heart, their elevating influence over my mind. I reproached myself, bitterly 
reproached myself, for not having written more fully and frankly to Eustace. Why 
had I hesitated to sacrifice to him my hopes and my interests in the coming 
investigation? He had not hesitated, poor fellow--his first thought was the 
thought of his wife!
I had passed a fortnight with my uncle and aunt before I heard again from Mr. 
Playmore. When a letter from him arrived at last, it disappointed me 
indescribably. A telegram from our messenger informed us that the lodge-keeper's 
daughter and her husband had left New York, and that he was still in search of a 
trace of them.
There was nothing to be done but to wait as patiently as we could, on the chance 
of hearing better news. I remained in the North, by Mr. Playmore's advice, so as 
to be within an easy journey to Edinburgh--in case it might be necessary for me 
to consult him personally. Three more weeks of weary expectation passed before a 
second letter reached me. This time it was impossible to say whether the news 
were good or bad. It might have been either--it was simply bewildering. Even Mr. 
Playmore himself was taken by surprise. These were the last wonderful 
words--limited of course by considerations of economy--which reached us (by 
telegram) from our agent in America:
"Open the dust-heap at Gleninch."



CHAPTER XLIII.
AT LAST!



MY letter from Mr. Playmore, inclosing the agent's extraordinary telegram, was 
not inspired by the sanguine view of our prospects which he had expressed to me 
when we met at Benjamin's house.
"If the telegram mean anything," he wrote, "it means that the fragments of the 
torn letter have been cast into the housemaid's bucket (along with the dust, the 
ashes, and the rest of the litter in the room), and have been emptied on the 
dust-heap at Gleninch. Since this was done, the accumulated refuse collected 
from the periodical cleansings of the house, during a term of nearly three 
years--including, of course, the ashes from the fires kept burning, for the 
greater part of the year, in the library and the picture-gallery--have been 
poured upon the heap, and have buried the precious morsels of paper deeper and 
deeper, day by day. Even if we have a fair chance of finding these fragments, 
what hope can we feel, at this distance of time, of recovering them with the 
writing in a state of preservation? I shall be glad to hear, by return of post 
if possible, how the matter strikes you. If you could make it convenient to 
consult with me personally in Edinburgh, we should save time, when time may be 
of serious importance to us. While you are at Doctor Starkweather's you are 
within easy reach of this place. Please think of it."
I thought of it seriously enough. The foremost question which I had to consider 
was the question of my husband.
The departure of the mother and son from Spain had been so long delayed, by the 
surgeon's orders, that the travelers had only advanced on their homeward journey 
as far as Bordeaux, when I had last heard from Mrs. Macallan three or four days 
since. Allowing for an interval of repose at Bordeaux, and for the slow rate at 
which they would be compelled to move afterward, I might still expect them to 
arrive in England some time before a letter from the agent in America could 
reach Mr. Playmore. How, in this position of affairs, I could contrive to join 
the lawyer in Edinburgh, after meeting my husband in London, it was not easy to 
see. The wise and the right way, as I thought, was to tell Mr. Playmore frankly 
that I was not mistress of my Own movements, and that he had better address his 
next letter to me at Benjamin's house.
Writing to my legal adviser in this sense, I had a word of my own to add on the 
subject of the torn letter.
In the last years of my father's life I had traveled with him in Italy, and I 
had seen in the Museum at Naples the wonderful relics of a bygone time 
discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. By way of encouraging Mr. Playmore, I now 
reminded him that the eruption which had overwhelmed the town had preserved, for 
more than sixteen hundred years, such perishable things as the straw in which 
pottery had been packed; the paintings on house walls; the dresses worn by the 
inhabitants; and (most noticeable of all, in our case) a piece of ancient paper, 
still attached to the volcanic ashes which had fallen over it. If these 
discoveries had been made after a lapse of sixteen centuries, under a layer of 
dust and ashes on a large scale, surely we might hope to meet with similar cases 
of preservation, after a lapse of three or four years only, under a layer of 
dust and ashes on a small scale. Taking for granted (what was perhaps doubtful 
enough) that the fragments of the letter could be recovered, my own conviction 
was that the writing on them, though it might be faded, would certainly still be 
legible. The very accumulations which Mr. Playmore deplored would be the means 
of preserving them from the rain and the damp. With these modest hints I closed 
my letter; and thus for once, thanks to my Continental experience, I was able to 
instruct my lawyer!
Another day passed; and I heard nothing of the travelers.
I began to feel anxious. I made my preparations for my journey southward 
overnight; and I resolved to start for London the next day--unless I heard of 
some change in Mrs. Macallan's traveling arrangements in the interval.
The post of the next morning decided my course of action. It brought me a letter 
from my mother-in-law, which added one more to the memorable dates in my 
domestic calendar.
Eustace and his mother had advanced as far as Paris on their homeward journey, 
when a cruel disaster had befallen them. The fatigues of traveling, and the 
excitement of his anticipated meeting with me, had proved together to be too 
much for my husband. He had held out as far as Paris with the greatest 
difficulty; and he was now confined to his bed again, struck down by a relapse. 
The doctors, this time, had no fear for his life, provided that his patience 
would support him through a lengthened period of the most absolute repose.
"It now rests with you, Valeria," Mrs. Macallan wrote, "to fortify and comfort 
Eustace under this new calamity. Do not suppose that he has ever blamed or 
thought of blaming you for leaving him with me in Spain, as soon as he was 
declared to be out of danger. 'It was I who left her,' he said to me, when we 
first talked about it; 'and it is my wife's right to expect that I should go 
back to her.' Those were his words, my dear; and he has done all he can to abide 
by them. Helpless in his bed, he now asks you to take the will for the deed, and 
to join him in Paris. I think I know you well enough, my child, to be sure that 
you will do this; and I need only add one word of caution, before I close my 
letter. Avoid all reference, not only to the Trial (you will do that of your own 
accord), but even to our house at Gleninch. You will understand how he feels, in 
his present state of nervous depression, when I tell you that I should never 
have ventured on asking you to join him here, if your letter had not informed me 
that your visits to Dexter were at an end. Would you believe it?--his horror of 
anything which recalls our past troubles is still so vivid that he has actually 
asked me to give my consent to selling Gleninch!"
So Eustace's mother wrote of him. But she had not trusted entirely to her own 
powers of persuasion. A slip of paper was inclosed in her letter, containing 
these two lines, traced in pencil--oh, so feebly and so wearily!--by my poor 
darling himself:
"I am too weak to travel any further, Valeria. Will you come to me and forgive 
me?" A few pencil-marks followed; but they were illegible. The writing of those 
two short sentences had exhausted him.
It is not saying much for myself, I know--but, having confessed it when I was 
wrong, let me, at least, record it when I did what was right--I decided 
instantly on giving up all further connection with the recovery of the torn 
letter. If Eustace asked me the question, I was resolved to be able to answer 
truly: "I have made the sacrifice that assures your tranquillity. When 
resignation was hardest, I have humbled my obstinate spirit, and I have given 
way for my husband's sake."
There was half an hour to spare before I left the vicarage for the railway 
station. In that interval I wrote again to Mr. Playmore, telling him plainly 
what my position was, and withdrawing, at once and forever, from all share in 
investigating the mystery which lay hidden under the dust-heap at Gleninch.



CHAPTER XLIV.
OUR NEW HONEYMOON.



It is not to be disguised or denied that my spirits were depressed on my journey 
to London.
To resign the one cherished purpose of my life, when I had suffered so much in 
pursuing it, and when I had (to all appearance) so nearly reached the 
realization of my hopes, was putting to a hard trial a woman's fortitude and a 
woman's sense of duty. Still, even if the opportunity had been offered to me, I 
would not have recalled my letter to Mr. Playmore. "It is done, and well done," 
I said to myself; "and I have only to wait a day to be reconciled to it--when I 
give my husband my first kiss."
I had planned and hoped to reach London in time to start for Paris by the 
night-mail. But the train was twice delayed on the long journey from the North; 
and there was no help for it but to sleep at Benjamin's villa, and to defer my 
departure until the morning.
It was, of course, impossible for me to warn my old friend of the change in my 
plans. My arrival took him by surprise. I found him alone in his library, with a 
wonderful illumination of lamps and candles, absorbed over some morsels of torn 
paper scattered on the table before him.
"What in the world are you about?" I asked.
Benjamin blushed--I was going to say, like a young girl; but young girls have 
given up blushing in these latter days of the age we live in.
"Oh, nothing, nothing!" he said, confusedly. "Don't notice it."
He stretched out his hand to brush the morsels of paper off the table. Those 
morsels raised a sudden suspicion in my mind. I stopped him.
"You have heard from Mr. Playmore!" I said. "Tell me the truth, Benjamin. Yes or 
no?"
Benjamin blushed a shade deeper, and answered, "Yes."
"Where is the letter?"
"I mustn't show it to you, Valeria."
This (need I say it?) made me determined to see the letter. My best way of 
persuading Benjamin to show it to me was to tell him of the sacrifice that I had 
made to my husband's wishes. "I have no further voice in the matter," I added, 
when I had done. "It now rests entirely with Mr. Playmore to go on or to give 
up; and this is my last opportunity of discovering what he really thinks about 
it. Don't I deserve some little indulgence? Have I no claim to look at the 
letter?"
Benjamin was too much surprised, and too much pleased with me, when he heard 
what had happened, to be able to resist my entreaties. He gave me the letter.
Mr. Playmore wrote to appeal confidentially to Benjamin as a commercial man. In 
the long course of his occupation in business, it was just possible that he 
might have heard of cases in which documents have been put together again after 
having been torn up by design or by accident. Even if his experience failed in 
this particular, he might be able to refer to some authority in London who would 
be capable of giving an opinion on the subject. By way of explaining his strange 
request, Mr. Playmore reverted to the notes which Benjamin had taken at 
Miserrimus Dexter's house, and informed him of the serious importance of "the 
gibberish" which he had reported under protest. The letter closed by 
recommending that any correspondence which ensued should be kept a secret from 
me--on the ground that it might excite false hopes in my mind if I were informed 
of it.
I now understood the tone which my worthy adviser had adopted in writing to me. 
His interest in the recovery of the letter was evidently so overpowering that 
common prudence compelled him to conceal it from me, in case of ultimate 
failure. This did not look as if Mr. Playmore was likely to give up the 
investigation on my withdrawal from it. I glanced again at the fragments of 
paper on Benjamin's table, with an interest in them which I had not felt yet.
"Has anything been found at Gleninch?" I asked.
"No," said Benjamin. "I have only been trying experiments with a letter of my 
own, before I wrote to Mr. Playmore."
"Oh, you have torn up the letter yourself, then?"
"Yes. And, to make it all the more difficult to put them together again, I shook 
up the pieces in a basket. It's a childish thing to do, my dear, at my age--"
He stopped, looking very much ashamed of himself.
"Well," I went on; "and have you succeeded in putting your letter together 
again?"
"It's not very easy, Valeria. But I have made a beginning. It's the same 
principle as the principle in the 'Puzzles' which we used to put together when I 
was a boy. Only get one central bit of it right, and the rest of the Puzzle 
falls into its place in a longer or a shorter time. Please don't tell anybody, 
my dear. People might say I was in my dotage. To think of that gibberish in my 
note-book having a meaning in it, after all! I only got Mr. Playmore's letter 
this morning; and--I am really almost ashamed to mention it--I have been trying 
experiments on torn letters, off and on, ever since. You won't tell upon me, 
will you?"
I answered the dear old man by a hearty embrace. Now that he had lost his steady 
moral balance, and had caught the infection of my enthusiasm, I loved him better 
than ever.
But I was not quite happy, though I tried to appear so. Struggle against it as I 
might, I felt a little mortified when I remembered that I had resigned all 
further connection with the search for the letter at such a time as this. My one 
comfort was to think of Eustace. My one encouragement was to keep my mind fixed 
as constantly as possible on the bright change for the better that now appeared 
in the domestic prospect. Here, at least, there was no disaster to fear; here I 
could honestly feel that I had triumphed. My husband had come back to me of his 
own free will; he had not given way, under the hard weight of evidence--he had 
yielded to the nobler influences of his gratitude and his love. And I had taken 
him to my heart again--not because I had made discoveries which left him no 
other alternative than to live with me, but because I believed in the better 
mind that had come to him, and loved and trusted him without reserve. Was it not 
worth some sacrifice to have arrived at this result! True--most true! And yet I 
was a little out of spirits. Ah, well! well! the remedy was within a day's 
journey. The sooner I was with Eustace the better.
Early the next morning I left London for Paris by the tidal-train. Benjamin 
accompanied me to the Terminus.
"I shall write to Edinburgh by to-day's post," he said, in the interval before 
the train moved out of the station. "I think I can find the man Mr. Playmore 
wants to help him, if he decides to go on. Have you any message to send, 
Valeria?"
"No. I have done with it, Benjamin; I have nothing more to say."
"Shall I write and tell you how it ends, if Mr. Playmore does really try the 
experiment at Gleninch?"
I answered, as I felt, a little bitterly.
"Yes," I said "Write and tell me if the experiment fail."
My old friend smiled. He knew me better than I knew myself.
"All right!" he said, resignedly. "I have got the address of your banker's 
correspondent in Paris. You will have to go there for money, my dear; and you 
may find a letter waiting for you in the office when you least expect it. Let me 
hear how your husband goes on. Good-by--and God bless you!"
That evening I was restored to Eustace.
He was too weak, poor fellow, even to raise his head from the pillow. I knelt 
down at the bedside and kissed him. His languid, weary eyes kindled with a new 
life as my lips touched his. "I must try to live now," he whispered, "for your 
sake."
My mother-in-law had delicately left us together. When he said those words the 
temptation to tell him of the new hope that had come to brighten our lives was 
more than I could resist.
"You must try to live now, Eustace," I said, "for some one else besides me."
His eyes looked wonderingly into mine.
"Do you mean my mother?" he asked.
I laid my head on his bosom, and whispered back--"I mean your child."
I had all my reward for all that I had given up. I forgot Mr. Playmore; I forgot 
Gleninch. Our new honeymoon dates, in my remembrance, from that day.
The quiet time passed, in the by-street in which we lived. The outer stir and 
tumult of Parisian life ran its daily course around us, unnoticed and unheard. 
Steadily, though slowly, Eustace gained strength. The doctors, with a word or 
two of caution, left him almost entirely to me. "You are his physician," they 
said; "the happier you make him, the sooner he will recover." The quiet, 
monotonous round of my new life was far from wearying me. I, too, wanted 
repose--I had no interests, no pleasures, out of my husband's room.
Once, and once only, the placid surface of our lives was just gently ruffled by 
an allusion to the past. Something that I accidentally said reminded Eustace of 
our last interview at Major Fitz-David's house. He referred, very delicately, to 
what I had then said of the Verdict pronounced on him at the Trial; and he left 
me to infer that a word from my lips, confirming what his mother had already 
told him, would quiet his mind at once and forever.
My answer involved no embarrassments or difficulties; I could and did honestly 
tell him that I had made his wishes my law. But it was hardly in womanhood, I am 
afraid, to be satisfied with merely replying, and to leave it there. I thought 
it due to me that Eustace too should concede something, in the way of an 
assurance which might quiet my mind. As usual with me, the words followed the 
impulse to speak them. "Eustace," I asked, "are you quite cured of those cruel 
doubts which once made you leave me?"
His answer (as he afterward said) made me blush with pleasure. "Ah, Valeria, I 
should never have gone away if I had known you then as well as I know you now!"
So the last shadows of distrust melted away out of our lives.
The very remembrance of the turmoil and the trouble of my past days in London 
seemed now to fade from my memory. We were lovers again; we were absorbed again 
in each other; we could almost fancy that our marriage dated back once more to a 
day or two since. But one last victory over myself was wanting to make my 
happiness complete. I still felt secret longings, in those dangerous moments 
when I was left by myself, to know whether the search for the torn letter had or 
had not taken place. What wayward creatures we are! With everything that a woman 
could want to make her happy, I was ready to put that happiness in peril rather 
than remain ignorant of what was going on at Gleninch! I actually hailed the day 
when my empty purse gave me an excuse for going to my banker's correspondent on 
business, and so receiving any letters waiting for me which might be placed in 
my hands.
I applied for my money without knowing what I was about; wondering all the time 
whether Benjamin had written to me or not. My eyes wandered over the desks and 
tables in the office, looking for letters furtively. Nothing of the sort was 
visible. But a man appeared from an inner office: an ugly man, who was yet 
beautiful to my eyes, for this sufficient reason--he had a letter in his hand, 
and he said, "Is this for you, ma'am?"
A glance at the address showed me Benjamin's handwriting.
Had they tried the experiment of recovering the letter? and had they failed?
Somebody put my money in my bag, and politely led me out to the little hired 
carriage which was waiting for me at the door. I remember nothing distinctly 
until I opened the letter on my way home. The first words told me that the 
dust-heap had been examined, and that the fragments of the torn letter had been 
found.



CHAPTER XLV.
THE DUST-HEAP DISTURBED.



My head turned giddy. I was obliged to wait and let my overpowering agitation 
subside, before I could read any more.
Looking at the letter again, after an interval, my eyes fell accidentally on a 
sentence near the end, which surprised and startled me.
I stopped the driver of the carriage, at the entrance to the street in which our 
lodgings were situated, and told him to take me to the beautiful park of 
Paris--the famous Bois de Boulogne. My object was to gain time enough, in this 
way, to read the letter carefully through by myself, and to ascertain whether I 
ought or ought not to keep the receipt of it a secret before I confronted my 
husband and his mother at home.
This precaution taken, I read the narrative which my good Benjamin had so wisely 
and so thoughtfully written for me. Treating the various incidents methodically, 
he began with the Report which had arrived, in due course of mail, from our 
agent in America.
Our man had successfully traced the lodgekeeper's daughter and her husband to a 
small town in one of the Western States. Mr. Playmore's letter of introduction 
at once secured him a cordial reception from the married pair, and a patient 
hearing when he stated the object of his voyage across the Atlantic.
His first questions led to no very encouraging results. The woman was confused 
and surprised, and was apparently quite unable to exert her memory to any useful 
purpose. Fortunately, her husband proved to be a very intelligent man. He took 
the agent privately aside, and said to him, "I understand my wife, and you 
don't. Tell me exactly what it is you want to know, and leave it to me to 
discover how much she remembers and how much she forgets."
This sensible suggestion was readily accepted. The agent waited for events a day 
and a night.
Early the next morning the husband said to him, "Talk to my wife now, and you'll 
find she has something to tell you. Only mind this. Don't laugh at her when she 
speaks of trifles. She is half ashamed to speak of trifles, even to me. Thinks 
men are above such matters, you know. Listen quietly, and let her talk--and you 
will get at it all in that way."
The agent followed his instructions, and "got at it" as follows:
The woman remembered, perfectly well, being sent to clean the bedrooms and put 
them tidy, after the gentlefolks had all left Gleninch. Her mother had a bad hip 
at the time, and could not go with her and help her. She did not much fancy 
being alone in the great house, after what had happened in it. On her way to her 
work she passed two of the cottagers' children in the neighborhood at play in 
the park. Mr. Macallan was always kind to his poor tenants, and never objected 
to the young ones round about having a run on the grass. The two children idly 
followed her to the house. She took them inside, along with her--not liking the 
place, as already mentioned, and feeling that they would be company in the 
solitary rooms.
She began her work in the Guests' Corridor--leaving the room in the other 
corridor, in which the death had happened, to the last.
There was very little to do in the two first rooms. There was not litter enough, 
when she had swept the floors and cleaned the grates, to even half fill the 
housemaid's bucket which she carried with her. The children followed her about; 
and, all things considered, were "very good company" in the lonely place.
The third room (that is to say, the bedchamber which had been occupied by 
Miserrimus Dexter was in a much worse state than the other two, and wanted a 
great deal of tidying. She did not much notice the children here, being occupied 
with her work. The litter was swept up from the carpet, and the cinders and 
ashes were taken out of the grate, and the whole of it was in the bucket, when 
her attention was recalled to the children by hearing one of them cry.
She looked about the room without at first discovering them.
A fresh outburst of crying led her in the right direction, and showed her the 
children under a table in a corner of the room. The youngest of the two had got 
into a waste-paper basket. The eldest had found an old bottle of gum, with a 
brush fixed in the cork, and was gravely painting the face of the smaller child 
with what little remained of the contents of the bottle. Some natural struggles, 
on the part of the little creature, had ended in the overthrow of the basket, 
and the usual outburst of crying had followed as a matter of course.
In this state of things the remedy was soon applied. The woman took the bottle 
away from the eldest child, and gave it a "box on the ear." The younger one she 
set on its legs again, and she put the two "in the corner" to keep them quiet. 
This done, she swept up such fragments of the torn paper in the basket as had 
fallen on the floor; threw them back again into the basket, along with the 
gum-bottle; fetched the bucket, and emptied the basket into it; and then 
proceeded to the fourth and last room in the corridor, where she finished her 
work for that day.
Leaving the house, with the children after her, she took the filled bucket to 
the dust-heap, and emptied it in a hollow place among the rubbish, about 
half-way up the mound. Then she took the children home; and there was an end of 
it for the day.
Such was the result of the appeal made to the woman's memory of domestic events 
at Gleninch.
The conclusion at which Mr. Playmore arrived, from the facts submitted to him, 
was that the chances were now decidedly in favor of the recovery of the letter. 
Thrown in, nearly midway between the contents of the housemaid's bucket, the 
torn morsels would be protected above as well as below, when they were emptied 
on the dust-heap.
Succeeding weeks and months would add to that protection, by adding to the 
accumulated refuse. In the neglected condition of the grounds, the dust-heap had 
not been disturbed in search of manure. There it had stood, untouched, from the 
time when the family left Gleninch to the present day. And there, hidden deep 
somewhere in the mound, the fragments of the letter must be.
Such were the lawyer's conclusions. He had written immediately to communicate 
them to Benjamin. And, thereupon, what had Benjamin done?
After having tried his powers of reconstruction on his own correspondence, the 
prospect of experimenting on the mysterious letter itself had proved to be a 
temptation too powerful for the old man to resist. "I almost fancy, my dear, 
this business of yours has bewitched me," he wrote. "You see I have the 
misfortune to be an idle man. I have time to spare and money to spare. And the 
end of it is that I am here at Gleninch, engaged on my own sole responsibility 
(with good Mr. Playmore's permission) in searching the dust-heap!"
Benjamin's description of his first view of the field of action at Gleninch 
followed these characteristic lines of apology.
I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance of the scene was 
too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. I saw again, in the dim evening 
light, the unsightly mound which had so strangely attracted my attention at 
Gleninch. I heard again the words in which Mr. Playmore had explained to me the 
custom of the dust-heap in Scotch country-houses. What had Benjamin and Mr. 
Playmore done? What had Benjamin and Mr. Playmore found? For me, the true 
interest of the narrative was there--and to that portion of it I eagerly turned 
next.
They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on the pounds, 
shillings, and pence, and the other on the object in view. In Benjamin, the 
lawyer had found what he had not met with in me--a sympathetic mind, alive to 
the value of "an abstract of the expenses," and conscious of that most 
remunerative of human virtues, the virtue of economy.
At so much a week, they had engaged men to dig into the mound and to sift the 
ashes. At so much a week, they had hired a tent to shelter the open dust-heap 
from wind and weather. At so much a week, they had engaged the services of a 
young man (personally known to Benjamin), who was employed in a laboratory under 
a professor of chemistry, and who had distinguished himself by his skillful 
manipulation of paper in a recent case of forgery on a well-known London firm. 
Armed with these preparations, they had begun the work; Benjamin and the young 
chemist living at Gleninch, and taking it in turns to superintend the 
proceedings.
Three days of labor with the spade and the sieve produced no results of the 
slightest importance. However, the matter was in the hands of two quietly 
determined men. They declined to be discouraged. They went on.
On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found.
Upon examination, they proved to be the fragments of a tradesman's prospectus. 
Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the young chemist still persevered. At the end of 
the day's work more pieces of paper were turned up. These proved to be covered 
with written characters. Mr. Playmore (arriving at Gleninch, as usual, every 
evening on the conclusion of his labors in the law) was consulted as to the 
handwriting. After careful examination, he declared that the mutilated portions 
of sentences submitted to him had been written, beyond all doubt, by Eustace 
Macallan's first wife!
This discovery aroused the enthusiasm of the searchers to fever height.
Spades and sieves were from that moment forbidden utensils. However unpleasant 
the task might be, hands alone were used in the further examination of the 
mound. The first and foremost necessity was to place the morsels of paper (in 
flat cardboard boxes prepared for the purpose) in their order as they were 
found. Night came; the laborers were dismissed; Benjamin and his two colleagues 
worked on by lamplight. The morsels of paper were now turned up by dozens, 
instead of by ones and twos. For a while the search prospered in this way; and 
then the morsels appeared no more. Had they all been recovered? or would renewed 
hand-digging yield more yet? The next light layers of rubbish were carefully 
removed--and the grand discovery of the day followed. There (upside down) was 
the gum-bottle which the lodge-keeper's daughter had spoken of. And, more 
precious still, there, under it, were more fragments of written paper, all stuck 
together in a little lump, by the last drippings from the gum-bottle dropping 
upon them as they lay on the dust-heap!
The scene now shifted to the interior of the house. When the searchers next 
assembled they met at the great table in the library at Gleninch.
Benjamin's experience with the "Puzzles" which he had put together in the days 
of his boyhood proved to be of some use to his companions. The fragments 
accidentally stuck together would, in all probability, be found to fit each 
other, and would certainly (in any case) be the easiest fragments to reconstruct 
as a center to start from.
The delicate business of separating these pieces of paper, and of preserving 
them in the order in which they had adhered to each other, was assigned to the 
practiced fingers of the chemist. But the difficulties of his task did not end 
here. The writing was (as usual in letters) traced on both sides of the paper, 
and it could only be preserved for the purpose of reconstruction by splitting 
each morsel into two--so as artificially to make a blank side, on which could be 
spread the fine cement used for reuniting the fragments in their original form.
To Mr. Playmore and Benjamin the prospect of successfully putting the letter 
together, under these disadvantages, seemed to be almost hopeless. Their skilled 
colleague soon satisfied them that they were wrong.
He drew their attention to the thickness of the paper--note-paper of the 
strongest and best quality--on which the writing was traced. It was of more than 
twice the substance of the last paper on which he had operated, when he was 
engaged in the forgery ease; and it was, on that account, comparatively easy for 
him (aided by the mechanical appliances which he had brought from London) to 
split the morsels of the torn paper, within a given space of time which might 
permit them to begin the reconstruction of the letter that night.
With these explanations, he quietly devoted himself to his work. While Benjamin 
and the lawyer were still poring over the scattered morsels of the letter which 
had been first discovered, and trying to piece them together again, the chemist 
had divided the greater part of the fragments specially confided to him into two 
halves each; and had correctly put together some five or six sentences of the 
letter on the smooth sheet of cardboard prepared for that purpose.
They looked eagerly at the reconstructed writing so far.
It was correctly done: the sense was perfect. The first result gained by 
examination was remarkable enough to reward them for all their exertions. The 
language used plainly identified the person to whom the late Mrs. Eustace had 
addressed her letter.
That person was--my husband.
And the letter thus addressed--if the plainest circumstantial evidence could be 
trusted--was identical with the letter which Miserrimus Dexter had suppressed 
until the Trial was over, and had then destroyed by tearing it up.
These were the discoveries that had been made at the time when Benjamin wrote to 
me. He had been on the point of posting his letter, when Mr. Playmore had 
suggested that he should keep it by him for a few days longer, on the chance of 
having more still to tell me.
"We are indebted to her for these results," the lawyer had said. "But for her 
resolution; and her influence over Miserrimus Dexter, we should never have 
discovered what the dust-heap was hiding from us--we should never have seen so 
much as a glimmering of the truth. She has the first claim to the fullest 
information. Let her have it."
The letter had been accordingly kept back for three days. That interval being at 
an end, it was hurriedly resumed and concluded in terms which indescribably 
alarmed me.
"The chemist is advancing rapidly with his part of the work" (Benjamin wrote); 
"and I have succeeded in putting together a separate portion of the torn writing 
which makes sense. Comparison of what he has accomplished with what I have 
accomplished has led to startling conclusions. Unless Mr. Playmore and I are 
entirely wrong (and God grant we may be so!), there is a serious necessity for 
your keeping the reconstruction of the letter strictly secret from everybody 
about you. The disclosures suggested by what has come to light are so 
heartrending and so dreadful that I cannot bring myself to write about them 
until I am absolutely obliged to do so. Please forgive me for disturbing you 
with this news. We are bound, sooner or later, to consult with you in the 
matter; and we think it right to prepare your mind for what may be to come."
To this there was added a postscript in Mr. Playmore's handwriting:
"Pray observe strictly the caution which Mr. Benjamin impresses on you. And bear 
this in mind, as a warning from me: If we succeed in reconstructing the entire 
letter, the last person living who ought (in my opinion) to be allowed to see it 
is--your husband."



CHAPTER XLVI.
THE CRISIS DEFERRED.



"TAKE care, Valeria!" said Mrs. Macallan. "I ask you no questions; I only 
caution you for your own sake. Eustace has noticed what I have noticed--Eustace 
has seen a change in you. Take care!"
So my mother-in-law spoke to me later in the day, when we happened to be alone. 
I had done my best to conceal all traces of the effect produced on me by the 
strange and terrible news from Gleninch. But who could read what I had read, who 
could feel what I now felt, and still maintain an undisturbed serenity of look 
and manner? If I had been the vilest hypocrite living, I doubt even then if my 
face could have kept my secret while my mind was full of Benjamin's letter.
Having spoken her word of caution, Mrs. Macallan made no further advance to me. 
I dare say she was right. Still, it seemed hard to be left, without a word of 
advice or of sympathy, to decide for myself what it was my duty to my husband to 
do next.
To show him Benjamin's narrative, in his state of health, and in the face of the 
warning addressed to me, was simply out of the question. At the same time, it 
was equally impossible, after I had already betrayed myself, to keep him 
entirely in the dark. I thought over it anxiously in the night. When the morning 
came, I decided to appeal to my husband's confidence in me.
I went straight to the point in these terms:
"Eustace, your mother said yesterday that you noticed a change in me when I came 
back from my drive. Is she right?"
"Quite right, Valeria," he answered--speaking in lower tones than usual, and not 
looking at me.
"We have no concealments from each other now," I answered. "I ought to tell you, 
and do tell you, that I found a letter from England waiting at the banker's 
which has caused me some agitation and alarm. Will you leave it to me to choose 
my own time for speaking more plainly? And will you believe, love, that I am 
really doing my duty toward you, as a good wife, in making this request?"
I paused. He made no answer: I could see that he was secretly struggling with 
himself. Had I ventured too far? Had I overestimated the strength of my 
influence? My heart beat fast, my voice faltered--but I summoned courage enough 
to take his hand, and to make a last appeal to him. "Eustace," I said; "don't 
you know me yet well enough to trust me?"
He turned toward me for the first time. I saw a last vanishing trace of doubt in 
his eyes as they looked into mine.
"You promise, sooner or later, to tell me the whole truth?" he said
"I promise with all my heart!"
"I trust you, Valeria!"
His brightening eyes told me that he really meant what he said. We sealed our 
compact with a kiss. Pardon me for mentioning these trifles--I am still writing 
(if you will kindly remember it) of our new honeymoon.



By that day's post I answered Benjamin's letter, telling him what I had done, 
and entreating him, if he and Mr. Playmore approved of my conduct, to keep me 
informed of any future discoveries which they might make at Gleninch.
After an interval---an endless interval, as it seemed to me--of ten days more, I 
received a second letter from my old friend, with another postscript added by 
Mr. Playmore.
"We are advancing steadily and successfully with the putting together of the 
letter," Benjamin wrote. "The one new discovery which we have made is of serious 
importance to your husband. We have reconstructed certain sentences declaring, 
in the plainest words, that the arsenic which Eustace procured was purchased at 
the request of his wife, and was in her possession at Gleninch. This, remember, 
is in the handwriting of the wife, and is signed by the wife--as we have also 
found out. Unfortunately, I am obliged to add that the objection to taking your 
husband into our confidence, mentioned when I last wrote, still remains in 
force--in greater force, I may say, than ever. The more we make out of the 
letter, the more inclined we are (if we only studied our own feelings) to throw 
it back into the dust-heap, in mercy to the memory of the unhappy writer. I 
shall keep this open for a day or two. If there is more news to tell you by that 
time you will hear of it from Mr. Playmore."
Mr. Playmore's postscript followed, dated three days later.
"The concluding part of the late Mrs. Macallan's letter to her husband," the 
lawyer wrote, "has proved accidentally to be the first part which we have 
succeeded in piecing together. With the exception of a few gaps still left, here 
and there, the writing of the closing paragraphs has been perfectly 
reconstructed. I have neither the time nor the inclination to write to you on 
this sad subject in any detail. In a fortnight more, at the longest, we shall, I 
hope, send you a copy of the letter, complete from the first line to the last. 
Meanwhile, it is my duty to tell you that there is one bright side to this 
otherwise deplorable and shocking document. Legally speaking, as well as morally 
speaking, it absolutely vindicates your husband's innocence. And it may be 
lawfully used for this purpose--if he can reconcile it to his conscience, and to 
the mercy due to the memory of the dead, to permit the public exposure of the 
letter in Court. Understand me, he cannot be tried again on what we call the 
criminal charge--for certain technical reasons with which I need not trouble 
you. But, if the facts which were involved at the criminal trial can also be 
shown to be involved in a civil action (and in this case they can), the entire 
matter may be made the subject of a new legal inquiry; and the verdict of a 
second jury, completely vindicating your husband, may thus be obtained. Keep 
this information to yourself for the present. Preserve the position which you 
have so sensibly adopted toward Eustace until you have read the restored letter. 
When you have done this, my own idea is that you will shrink, in pity to him, 
from letting him see it. How he is to be kept in ignorance of what we have 
discovered is another question, the discussion of which must be deferred until 
we can consult together. Until that time comes, I can only repeat my 
advice--wait till the next news reaches you from Gleninch."
I waited. What I suffered, what Eustace thought of me, does not matter. Nothing 
matters now but the facts.
In less than a fortnight more the task of restoring the letter was completed. 
Excepting certain instances, in which the morsels of the torn paper had been 
irretrievably lost--and in which it had been necessary to complete the sense in 
harmony with the writer's intention--the whole letter had been put together; and 
the promised copy of it was forwarded to me in Paris.
Before you, too, read that dreadful letter, do me one favor. Let me briefly 
remind you of the circumstances under which Eustace Macallan married his first 
wife.
Remember that the poor creature fell in love with him without awakening any 
corresponding affection on his side. Remember that he separated himself from 
her, and did all he could to avoid her, when he found this out. Remember that 
she presented herself at his residence in London without a word of warning; that 
he did his best to save her reputation; that he failed, through no fault of his 
own; and that he ended, rashly ended in a moment of despair, by marrying her, to 
silence the scandal that must otherwise have blighted her life as a woman for 
the rest of her days. Bear all this in mind (it is the sworn testimony of 
respectable witnesses); and pray do not forget--however foolishly and blamably 
he may have written about her in the secret pages of his Diary--that he was 
proved to have done his best to conceal from his wife the aversion which the 
poor soul inspired in him; and that he was (in the opinion of those who could 
best judge him) at least a courteous and a considerate husband, if he could be 
no more.
And now take the letter. It asks but one favor of you: it asks to be read by the 
light of Christ's teaching--"Judge not, that ye be not judged."



CHAPTER XLVII.
THE WIFE'S CONFESSION.



"GLENINCH, October 19, 18--.
"MY HUSBAND--
"I have something very painful to tell you about one of your oldest friends.
"You have never encouraged me to come to you with any confidences of mine. If 
you had allowed me to be as familiar with you as some wives are with their 
husbands, I should have spoken to you personally instead of writing. As it is, I 
don't know how you might receive what I have to say to you if I said it by word 
of mouth. So I write.
"The man against whom I warn you is still a guest in this house--Miserrimus 
Dexter. No falser or wickeder creature walks the earth. Don't throw my letter 
aside! I have waited to say this until I could find proof that might satisfy 
you. I have got the proof.
"You may remember that I ventured to express some disapproval when you first 
told me you had asked this man to visit us. If you had allowed me time to 
explain myself, I might have been bold enough to give you a good reason for the 
aversion I felt toward your friend. But you would not wait. You hastily (and 
most unjustly) accused me of feeling prejudiced against the miserable creature 
on account of his deformity. No other feeling than compassion for deformed 
persons has ever entered my mind. I have, indeed, almost a fellow-feeling for 
them; being that next worst thing myself to a deformity--a plain woman. I 
objected to Mr. Dexter as your guest because he had asked me to be his wife in 
past days, and because I had reason to fear that he still regarded me (after my 
marriage) with a guilty and a horrible love. Was it not my duty, as a good wife, 
to object to his being your guest at Gleninch? And was it not your duty, as a 
good husband, to encourage me to say more?
"Well, Mr. Dexter has been your guest for many weeks; and Mr. Dexter has dared 
to speak to me again of his love. He has insulted me, and insulted you, by 
declaring that he adores me and that you hate me. He has promised me a life of 
unalloyed happiness, in a foreign country with my lover; and he has prophesied 
for me a life of unendurable misery at home with my husband.
"Why did I not make my complaint to you, and have this monster dismissed from 
the house at once and forever?
"Are you sure you would have believed me if I had complained, and if your bosom 
friend had denied all intention of insulting me? I heard you once say (when you 
were not aware that I was within hearing) that the vainest women were always the 
ugly women. You might have accused me of vanity. Who knows?
"But I have no desire to shelter myself under this excuse. I am a jealous, 
unhappy creature; always doubtful of your affection for me; always fearing that 
another woman has got my place in your heart. Miserrimus Dexter has practiced on 
this weakness of mine. He has declared he can prove to me (if I will permit him) 
that I am, in your secret heart, an object of loathing to you; that you shrink 
from touching me; that you curse the hour when you were foolish enough to make 
me your wife. I have struggled as long as I could against the temptation to let 
him produce his proofs. It was a terrible temptation to a woman who was far from 
feeling sure of the sincerity of your affection for her; and it has ended in 
getting the better of my resistance. I wickedly concealed the disgust which the 
wretch inspired in me; I wickedly gave him leave to explain himself; I wickedly 
permitted this enemy of yours and of mine to take me into his confidence. And 
why? Because I loved you, and you only; and because Miserrimus Dexter's proposal 
did, after all, echo a doubt of you that had long been gnawing secretly at my 
heart.
"Forgive me, Eustace! This is my first sin against you. It shall be my last.
"I will not spare myself; I will write a full confession of what I said to him 
and of what he said to me. You may make me suffer for it when you know what I 
have done; but you will at least be warned in time; you will see your false 
friend in his true light.
"I said to him, 'How can you prove to me that my husband hates me in secret?'
"He answered, 'I can prove it under his own handwriting; you shall see it in his 
Diary.'
"I said, 'His Diary has a lock; and the drawer in which he keeps it has a lock. 
How can you get at the Diary and the drawer?'
"He answered, 'I have my own way of getting at both of them, without the 
slightest risk of being discovered by your husband. All you have to do is to 
give me the opportunity of seeing you privately. I will engage, in return, to 
bring the open Diary with me to your room.'
"I said, 'How can I give you the opportunity? What do you mean?'
'He pointed to the key in the door of communication between my room and the 
little study.
"He said, 'With my infirmity, I may not be able to profit by the first 
opportunity of visiting you here unobserved. I must be able to choose my own 
time and my own way of getting to you secretly. Let me take this key, leaving 
the door locked. When the key is missed, if you say it doesn't matter--if you 
point out that the door is locked, and tell the servants not to trouble 
themselves about finding the key--there will be no disturbance in the house; and 
I shall be in secure possession of a means of communication with you which no 
one will suspect. Will you do this?'
"I have done it.
"Yes! I have become the accomplice of this double-faced villain. I have degraded 
myself and outraged you by making an appointment to pry into your Diary. I know 
how base my conduct is. I can make no excuse. I can only repeat that I love you, 
and that I am sorely afraid you don't love me. And Miserrimus Dexter offers to 
end my doubts by showing me the most secret thoughts of your heart, in your own 
writing.
"He is to be with me, for this purpose (while you are out), some time in the 
course of the next two hours I shall decline to be satisfied with only once 
looking at your Diary; and I shall make an appointment with him to bring it to 
me again at the same time to-morrow. Before then you will receive these lines by 
the hand of my nurse. Go out as usual after reading them; but return privately, 
and unlock the table-drawer in which you keep your book. You will find it gone. 
Post yourself quietly in the little study; and you will discover the Diary (when 
Miserrimus Dexter leaves me) in the hands of your friend.*





* Note by Mr. Playmore:
The greatest difficulties of reconstruction occurred in this first portion of 
the torn letter. In the fourth paragraph from the beginning we have been obliged 
to supply lost words in no less than three places. In the ninth, tenth, and 
seventeenth paragraphs the same proceeding was, in a greater or less degree, 
found to be necessary. In all these cases the utmost pains have been taken to 
supply the deficiency in exact accordance with what appeared to be the meaning 
of the writer, as indicated in the existing pieces of the manuscript.






"October 20.
"I have read your Diary.
"At last I know what you really think of me. I have read what Miserrimus Dexter 
promised I should read--the confession of your loathing for me, in your own 
handwriting.
"You will not receive what I wrote to you yesterday at the time or in the manner 
which I had proposed. Long as my letter is, I have still (after reading your 
Diary) some more words to add. After I have closed and sealed the envelope, and 
addressed it to you, I shall put it under my pillow. It will be found there when 
I am laid out for the grave--and then, Eustace (when it is too late for hope or 
help), my letter will be given to you.
"Yes: I have had enough of my life. Yes: I mean to die.
"I have already sacrificed everything but my life to my love for you. Now I know 
that my love is not returned, the last sacrifice left is easy. My death will set 
you free to marry Mrs. Beauly.
"You don't know what it cost me to control my hatred of her, and to beg her to 
pay her visit here, without minding my illness. I could never have done it if I 
had not been so fond of you, and so fearful of irritating you against me by 
showing my jealousy. And how did you reward me? Let your Diary answer: 'I 
tenderly embraced her this very morning; and I hope, poor soul, she did not 
discover the effort that it cost me.'
"Well, I have discovered it now. I know that you privately think your life with 
me 'a purgatory.' I know that you have compassionately hidden from me the 'sense 
of shrinking that comes over you when you are obliged to submit to my caresses.' 
I am nothing but an obstacle--an 'utterly distasteful' obstacle--between you and 
the woman whom you love so dearly that you 'adore the earth which she touches 
with her foot.' Be it so! I will stand in your way no longer. It is no sacrifice 
and no merit on my part. Life is unendurable to me, now I know that the man whom 
I love with all my heart and soul secretly shrinks from me whenever I touch him.
"I have got the means of death close at hand.
"The arsenic that I twice asked you to buy for me is in my dressing-case. I 
deceived you when I mentioned some commonplace domestic reasons for wanting it. 
My true reason was to try if I could not improve my ugly complexion--not from 
any vain feeling of mine: only to make myself look better and more lovable in 
your eyes. I have taken some of it for that purpose; but I have got plenty left 
to kill myself with. The poison will have its use at last. It might have failed 
to improve my complexion--it will not fail to relieve you of your ugly wife.
"Don't let me be examined after death. Show this letter to the doctor who 
attends me. It will tell him that I have committed suicide; it will prevent any 
innocent persons from being suspected of poisoning me. I want nobody to be 
blamed or punished. I shall remove the chemist's label, and carefully empty the 
bottle containing the poison, so that he may not suffer on my account.
"I must wait here, and rest a little while--then take up my letter again. It is 
far too long already. But these are my farewell words. I may surely dwell a 
little on my last talk with you!



"October 21. Two o'clock in the morning.
"I sent you out of the room yesterday when you came in to ask how I had passed 
the night. And I spoke of you shamefully, Eustace, after you had gone, to the 
hired nurse who attends on me. Forgive me. I am almost beside myself now. You 
know why.



"Half-past three.
"Oh, my husband, I have done the deed which will relieve you of the wife whom 
you hate! I have taken the poison--all of it that was left in the paper packet, 
which was the first that I found. If this is not enough to kill me, I have more 
left in the bottle.



"Ten minutes past five.
"You have just gone, after giving me my composing draught. My courage failed me 
at the sight of you. I thought to myself, 'If he look at me kindly, I will 
confess what I have done, and let him save my life.' You never looked at me at 
all. You only looked at the medicine. I let you go without saying a word.



"Half-past five.
"I begin to feel the first effects of the poison. The nurse is asleep at the 
foot of my bed. I won't call for assistance; I won't wake her. I will die.



"Half-past nine.
"The agony was beyond my endurance--I awoke the nurse. I have seen the doctor.
"Nobody suspects anything. Strange to say, the pain has left me; I have 
evidently taken too little of the poison. I must open the bottle which contains 
the larger quantity. Fortunately, you are not near me--my resolution to die, or, 
rather, my loathing of life, remains as bitterly unaltered as ever. To make sure 
of my courage, I have forbidden the nurse to send for you. She has just gone 
downstairs by my orders. I am free to get the poison out of my dressing-case.



"Ten minutes to ten.
"I had just time to hide the bottle (after the nurse had left me) when you came 
into my room.
"I had another moment of weakness when I saw you. I determined to give myself a 
last chance of life. That is to say, I determined to offer you a last 
opportunity of treating me kindly. I asked you to get me a cup of tea. If, in 
paying me this little attention, you only encouraged me by one fond word or one 
fond look, I resolved not to take the second dose of poison.
"You obeyed my wishes, but you were not kind. You gave me my tea, Eustace, as if 
you were giving a drink to your dog. And then you wondered in a languid way 
(thinking, I suppose, of Mrs. Beauly all the time), at my dropping the cup in 
handing it back to you. I really could not help it; my hand would tremble. In my 
place, your hand might have trembled too--with the arsenic under the bedclothes. 
You politely hoped, before you went away? that the tea would do me good--and, oh 
God, you could not even look at me when you said that! You looked at the broken 
bits of the tea-cup.
"The instant you were out of the room I took the poison--a double dose this 
time.
"I have a little request to make here, while I think of it.
"After removing the label from the bottle, and putting it back, clean, in my 
dressing-case, it struck me that I had failed to take the same precaution (in 
the early morning) with the empty paper-packet, bearing on it the name of the 
other chemist. I threw it aside on the counterpane of the bed, among some other 
loose papers. my ill-tempered nurse complained of the litter, and crumpled them 
all up and put them away somewhere. I hope the chemist will not suffer through 
my carelessness. Pray bear it in mind to say that he is not to blame.
"Dexter--something reminds me of Miserrimus Dexter. He has put your Diary back 
again in the drawer, and he presses me for an answer to his proposals. Has this 
false wretch any conscience? If he has, even he will suffer--when my death 
answers him.
"The nurse has been in my room again. I have sent her away. I have told her I 
want to be alone.
"How is the time going? I cannot find my watch. Is the pain coming back again 
and paralyzing me? I don't feel it keenly yet.
"It may come back, though, at any moment. I have still to close my letter and to 
address it to you. And, besides, I must save up my strength to hide it under the 
pillow, so that nobody may find it until after my death.
"Farewell, my dear. I wish I had been a prettier woman. A more loving woman 
(toward you) I could not be. Even now I dread the sight of your dear face. Even 
now, if I allowed myself the luxury of looking at you, I don't know that you 
might not charm me into confessing what I have done--before it is too late to 
save me.
"But you are not here. Better as it is! better as it is!
"Once more, farewell! Be happier than you have been with me. I love you, 
Eustace--I forgive you. When you have nothing else to think about, think 
sometimes, as kindly as you can, of your poor, ugly
"SARA MACALLAN."*





* Note by Mr. Playmore:
The lost words and phrases supplied in this concluding portion of the letter are 
so few in number that it is needless to mention them. The fragments which were 
found accidentally stuck together by the gum, and which represent the part of 
the letter first completely reconstructed, begin at the phrase, "I spoke of you 
shamefully, Eustace;" and end with the broken sentence, "If in paying me this 
little attention, you only encouraged me by one fond word or one fond look, I 
resolved not to take--" With the assistance thus afforded to us, the labor of 
putting together the concluding half of the letter (dated "October 20") was 
trifling, compared with the almost insurmountable difficulties which we 
encountered in dealing with the scattered wreck of the preceding pages. 



CHAPTER XLVIII.
WHAT ELSE COULD I DO?



As soon as I could dry my eyes and compose my spirits after reading the wife's 
pitiable and dreadful farewell, my first thought was of Eustace--my first 
anxiety was to prevent him from ever reading what I had read.
Yes! to this end it had come. I had devoted my life to the attainment of one 
object; and that object I had gained. There, on the table before me, lay the 
triumphant vindication of my husband's innocence; and, in mercy to him, in mercy 
to the memory of his dead wife, my one hope was that he might never see it! my 
one desire was to hide it from the public view!
I looked back at the strange circumstances under which the letter had been 
discovered.
It was all my doing--as the lawyer had said. And yet, what I had done, I had, so 
to speak, done blindfold. The merest accident might have altered the whole 
course of later events. I had over and over again interfered to check Ariel when 
she entreated the Master to "tell her a story." If she had not succeeded, in 
spite of my opposition, Miserrimus Dexter's last effort of memory might never 
have been directed to the tragedy at Gleninch. And, again, if I had only 
remembered to move my chair, and so to give Benjamin the signal to leave off, he 
would never have written down the apparently senseless words which have led us 
to the discovery of the truth.
Looking back at events in this frame of mind, the very sight of the letter 
sickened and horrified me. I cursed the day which had disinterred the fragments 
of it from their foul tomb. Just at the time when Eustace had found his weary 
way back to health and strength; just at the time when we were united again and 
happy again--when a month or two more might make us father and mother, as well 
as husband and wife--that frightful record of suffering and sin had risen 
against us like an avenging spirit. There it faced me on the table, threatening 
my husband's tranquillity; nay, for all I knew (if he read it at the present 
critical stage of his recovery) even threatening his life!
The hour struck from the clock on the mantelpiece. It was Eustace's time for 
paying me his morning visit in my own little room. He might come in at any 
moment; he might see the letter; he might snatch the letter out of my hand. In a 
frenzy of terror and loathing, I caught up the vile sheets of paper and threw 
them into the fire.
It was a fortunate thing that a copy only had been sent to me. If the original 
letter had been in its place, I believe I should have burned the original at 
that moment.
The last morsel of paper had been barely consumed by the flames when the door 
opened, and Eustace came in.
He glanced at the fire. The black cinders of the burned paper were still 
floating at the back of the grate. He had seen the letter brought to me at the 
breakfast-table. Did he suspect what I had done? He said nothing--he stood 
gravely looking into the fire. Then he advanced and fixed his eyes on me. I 
suppose I was very pale. The first words he spoke were words which asked me if I 
felt ill.
I was determined not to deceive him, even in the merest trifle.
"I am feeling a little nervous, Eustace," I answered; "that is all."
He looked at me again, as if he expected me to say something more. I remained 
silent. He took a letter out of the breast-pocket of his coat and laid it on the 
table before me--just where the Confession had lain before I destroyed it!
"I have had a letter too this morning," he said. "And I, Valeria, have no 
secrets from you."
I understood the reproach which my husband's last words conveyed; but I made no 
attempt to answer him.
"Do you wish me to read it?" was all I said pointing to the envelope which he 
had laid on the table.
"I have already said that I have no secrets from you," he repeated. "The 
envelope is open. See for yourself what is inclosed in it."
I took out--not a letter, but a printed paragraph, cut from a Scotch newspaper.
"Read it," said Eustace.
I read as follows:



"STRANGE DOINGS AT GLENINCH--A romance in real life seems to be in course of 
progress at Mr. Macallan's country-house. Private excavations are taking 
place--if our readers will pardon us the unsavory allusion--at the dust-heap, of 
all places in the world! Something has assuredly been discovered; but nobody 
knows what. This alone is certain: For weeks past two strangers from London 
(superintended by our respected fellow-citizen, Mr. Playmore) have been at work 
night and day in the library at Gleninch, with the door locked. Will the secret 
ever be revealed? And will it throw any light on a mysterious and shocking event 
which our readers have learned to associate with the past history of Gleninch? 
Perhaps when Mr. Macallan returns, he may be able to answer these questions. In 
the meantime we can only await events."



I laid the newspaper slip on the table, in no very Christian frame of mind 
toward the persons concerned in producing it. Some reporter in search of news 
had evidently been prying about the grounds at Gleninch, and some busy-body in 
the neighborhood had in all probability sent the published paragraph to Eustace. 
Entirely at a loss what to do, I waited for my husband to speak. He did not keep 
me in suspense--he questioned me instantly.
"Do you understand what it means, Valeria?"
I answered honestly--I owned that I understood what it meant.
He waited again, as if he expected me to say more. I still kept the only refuge 
left to me--the refuge of silence.
"Am I to know no more than I know now?" he proceeded, after an interval. "Are 
you not bound to tell me what is going on in my own house?"
It is a common remark that people, if they can think at all, think quickly in 
emergencies. There was but one way out of the embarrassing position in which my 
husband's last words had placed me. My instincts showed me the way, I suppose. 
At any rate, I took it.
"You have promised to trust me," I began.
He admitted that he had promised.
"I must ask you, for your own sake, Eustace, to trust me for a little while 
longer. I will satisfy you, if you will only give me time."
His face darkened. "How much longer must I wait?" he asked.
I saw that the time had come for trying some stronger form of persuasion than 
words.
"Kiss me," I said, "before I tell you!"
He hesitated (so like a husband!). And I persisted (so like a wife!). There was 
no choice for him but to yield. Having given me my kiss (not over-graciously), 
he insisted once more on knowing how much longer I wanted him to wait.
"I want you to wait," I answered, "until our child is born."
He started. My condition took him by surprise. I gently pressed his hand, and 
gave him a look. He returned the look (warmly enough, this time, to satisfy me). 
"Say you consent," I whispered.
He consented.
So I put off the day of reckoning once more. So I gained time to consult again 
with Benjamin and Mr. Playmore.
While Eustace remained with me in the room, I was composed, and capable of 
talking to him. But when he left me, after a time, to think over what had passed 
between us, and to remember how kindly he had given way to me, my heart turned 
pityingly to those other wives (better women, some of them, than I am), whose 
husbands, under similar circumstances, would have spoken hard words to 
them--would perhaps even have acted more cruelly still. The contrast thus 
suggested between their fate and mine quite overcame me. What had I done to 
deserve my happiness? What had they done, poor souls, to deserve their misery? 
My nerves were overwrought, I dare says after reading the dreadful confession of 
Eustace's first wife. I burst out crying--and I was all the better for it 
afterward!



CHAPTER XLIX.
PAST AND FUTURE.



I write from memory, unassisted by notes or diaries; and I have no distinct 
recollection of the length of our residence abroad. It certainly extended over a 
period of some months. Long after Eustace was strong enough to take the journey 
to London the doctors persisted in keeping him in Paris. He had shown symptoms 
of weakness in one of his lungs, and his medical advisers, seeing that he 
prospered in the dry atmosphere of France, warned him to be careful of breathing 
too soon the moist air of his own country.
Thus it happened that we were still in Paris when I received my next news from 
Gleninch.
This time no letters passed on either side. To my surprise and delight, Benjamin 
quietly made his appearance one morning in our pretty French drawing-room. He 
was so preternaturally smart in his dress, and so incomprehensibly anxious 
(while my husband was in the way) to make us understand that his reasons for 
visiting Paris were holiday reasons only, that I at once suspected him of having 
crossed the Channel in a double character--say, as tourist in search of 
pleasure, when third persons were present; as ambassador from Mr. Playmore, when 
he and I had the room to ourselves.
Later in the day I contrived that we should be left together, and I soon found 
that my anticipations had not misled me. Benjamin had set out for Paris, at Mr. 
Playmore's express request, to consult with me as to the future, and to 
enlighten me as to the past. He presented me with his credentials in the shape 
of a little note from the lawyer.
"There are some few points" (Mr. Playmore wrote) "which the recovery of the 
letter does not seem to clear up. I have done my best, with Mr. Benjamin's 
assistance, to find the right explanation of these debatable matters; and I have 
treated the subject, for the sake of brevity, in the form of Questions and 
Answers. Will you accept me as interpreter, after the mistakes I made when you 
consulted me in Edinburgh? Events, I admit, have proved that I was entirely 
wrong in trying to prevent you from returning to Dexter--and partially wrong in 
suspecting Dexter of being directly, instead of indirectly, answerable for the 
first Mrs. Eustace's death. I frankly make my confession, and leave you to tell 
Mr. Benjamin whether you think my new Catechism worthy of examination or not."
I thought his "new Catechism" (as he called it) decidedly worthy of examination. 
If you don't agree with this view, and if you are dying to be done with me and 
my narrative, pass on to the next chapter by all means!
Benjamin produced the Questions and Answers; and read them to me, at my request, 
in these terms:
"Questions suggested by the letter discovered at Gleninch. First Group: 
Questions relating to the Diary. First Question: obtaining access to Mr. 
Macallan's private journal, was Miserrimus Dexter guided by any previous 
knowledge of its contents?
"Answer: It is doubtful if he had any such knowledge. The probabilities are that 
he noticed how carefully Mr. Macallan secured his Diary from observation; that 
he inferred therefrom the existence of dangerous domestic secrets in the 
locked-up pages; and that he speculated on using those secrets for his own 
purpose when he caused the false keys to be made.
"Second Question: To what motive are we to attribute Miserrimus Dexter's 
interference with the sheriff's officers, on the day when they seized Mr. 
Macallan's Diary along with his other papers?
"Answer: In replying to this question, we must first do justice to Dexter 
himself. Infamously as we now know him to have acted, the man was not a 
downright fiend. That he secretly hated Mr. Macallan, as his successful rival in 
the affections of the woman he loved--and that he did all he could to induce the 
unhappy lady to desert her husband--are, in this case, facts not to be denied. 
On the other hand, it is fairly to be doubted whether he were additionally 
capable of permitting the friend who trusted him to be tried for murder, through 
his fault, without making an effort to save the innocent man. It had naturally 
never occurred to Mr. Macallan (being guiltless of his wife's death) to destroy 
his Diary and his letters, in the fear that they might be used against him. 
Until the prompt and secret action of the Fiscal took him by surprise, the idea 
of his being charged with the murder of his wife was an idea which we know, from 
his own statement, had never even entered his mind. But Dexter must have looked 
at the matter from another point of view. In his last wandering words (spoken 
when his mind broke down) he refers to the Diary in these terms, 'The Diary will 
hang him; I won't have him hanged.' If he could have found his opportunity of 
getting at it in time--or if the sheriff's officers had not been too quick for 
him--there can be no reasonable doubt that Dexter would have himself destroyed 
the Diary, foreseeing the consequences of its production in court. So strongly 
does he appear to have felt these considerations, that he even resisted the 
officers in the execution of their duty. His agitation when he sent for Mr. 
Playmore to interfere was witnessed by that gentleman, and (it may not be amiss 
to add) was genuine agitation beyond dispute.
"Questions of the Second Group: relating to the Wife's Confession. First 
Question: What prevented Dexter from destroying the letter, when he first 
discovered it under the dead woman's pillow?
"Answer: The same motives which led him to resist the seizure of the Diary, and 
to give his evidence in the prisoner's favor at the Trial, induced him to 
preserve the letter until the verdict was known. Looking back once more at his 
last words (as taken down by Mr. Benjamin), we may infer that if the verdict had 
been Guilty, he would not have hesitated to save the innocent husband by 
producing the wife's confession. There are degrees in all wickedness. Dexter was 
wicked enough to suppress the letter, which wounded his vanity by revealing him 
as an object for loathing and contempt--but he was not wicked enough 
deliberately to let an innocent man perish on the scaffold. He was capable of 
exposing the rival whom he hated to the infamy and torture of a public 
accusation of murder; but, in the event of an adverse verdict, he shrank before 
the direr cruelty of letting him be hanged. Reflect, in this connection, on what 
he must have suffered, villain as he was, when he first read the wife's 
confession. He had calculated on undermining her affection for her husband--and 
whither had his calculations led him? He had driven the woman whom he loved to 
the last dreadful refuge of death by suicide! Give these considerations their 
due weight; and you will understand that some little redeeming virtue might show 
itself, as the result even of this man's remorse.
"Second Question: What motive influenced Miserrimus Dexter's conduct, when Mrs. 
(Valeria) Macallan informed him that she proposed reopening the inquiry into the 
poisoning at Gleninch?
"Answer: In all probability, Dexter's guilty fears suggested to him that he 
might have been watched on the morning when he secretly entered the chamber in 
which the first Mrs. Eustace lay dead. Feeling no scruples himself to restrain 
him from listening at doors and looking through keyholes, he would be all the 
more ready to suspect other people of the same practices. With this dread in 
him, it would naturally occur to his mind that Mrs. Valeria might meet with the 
person who had watched him, and might hear all that the person had 
discovered--unless he led her astray at the outset of her investigations. Her 
own jealous suspicions of Mrs. Beauly offered him the chance of easily doing 
this. And he was all the readier to profit by the chance, being himself animated 
by the most hostile feeling toward that lady. He knew her as the enemy who 
destroyed the domestic peace of the mistress of the house; he loved the mistress 
of the house--and he hated her enemy accordingly. The preservation of his guilty 
secret, and the persecution of Mrs. Beauly: there you have the greater and the 
lesser motive of his conduct in his relations with Mrs. Eustace the second!"*





* Note by the writer of the Narrative:
Look back for a further illustration of this point of view to the scene at 
Benjamin's house (Chapter XXXV.), where Dexter, in a moment of ungovernable 
agitation, betrays his own secret to Valeria. 






Benjamin laid down his notes, and took off his spectacles.
"We have not thought it necessary to go further than this," he said. "Is there 
any point you can think of that is still left unexplained?"
I reflected. There was no point of any importance left unexplained that I could 
remember. But there was one little matter (suggested by the recent allusions to 
Mrs. Beauly) which I wished (if possible) to have thoroughly cleared up.
"Have you and Mr. Playmore ever spoken together on the subject of my husband's 
former attachment to Mrs. Beauly?" I asked. "Has Mr. Playmore ever told you why 
Eustace did not marry her, after the Trial?"
"I put that question to Mr. Playmore myself," said Benjamin. "He answered it 
easily enough. Being your husband's confidential friend and adviser, he was 
consulted when Mr. Eustace wrote to Mrs. Beauly, after the Trial; and he 
repeated the substance of the letter, at my request. Would you like to hear what 
I remember of it, in my turn?"
I owned that I should like to hear it. What Benjamin thereupon told me, exactly 
coincided with what Miserrimus Dexter had told me--as related in the thirtieth 
chapter of my narrative. Mrs. Beauly had been a witness of the public 
degradation of my husband. That was enough in itself to prevent him from 
marrying her: He broke off with her for the same reason which had led him to 
separate himself from me. Existence with a woman who knew that he had been tried 
for his life as a murderer was an existence which he had not resolution enough 
to face. The two accounts agreed in every particular. At last my jealous 
curiosity was pacified; and Benjamin was free to dismiss the past from further 
consideration, and to approach the more critical and more interesting topic of 
the future.
His first inquiries related to Eustace. He asked if my husband had any suspicion 
of the proceedings which had taken place at Gleninch.
I told him what had happened, and how I had contrived to put off the inevitable 
disclosure for a time.
My old friend's face cleared up as he listened to me.
"This will be good news for Mr. Playmore," he said. "Our excellent friend, the 
lawyer, is sorely afraid that our discoveries may compromise your position with 
your husband. On the one hand, he is naturally anxious to spare Mr. Eustace the 
distress which he must certainly feel, if he read his first wife's confession. 
On the other hand, it is impossible, in justice (as Mr. Playmore puts it) to the 
unborn children of your marriage, to suppress a document which vindicates the 
memory of their father from the aspersion that the Scotch Verdict might 
otherwise cast on it."
I listened attentively. Benjamin had touched on a trouble which was still 
secretly preying on my mind.
"How does Mr. Playmore propose to meet the difficulty?" I asked.
"He can only meet it in one way," Benjamin replied. "He proposes to seal up the 
original manuscript of the letter, and to add to it a plain statement of the 
circumstances under which it was discovered, supported by your signed 
attestation and mine, as witnesses to the fact. This done, he must leave it to 
you to take your husband into your confidence, at your own time. It will then be 
for Mr. Eustace to decide whether he will open the inclosure--or whether he will 
leave it, with the seal unbroken, as an heirloom to his children, to be made 
public or not, at their discretion, when they are of an age to think for 
themselves. Do you consent to this, my dear? Or would you prefer that Mr. 
Playmore should see your husband, and act for you in the matter?"
I decided, without hesitation, to take the responsibility on myself. Where the 
question of guiding Eustace's decision was concerned, I considered my influence 
to be decidedly superior to the influence of Mr. Playmore. My choice met with 
Benjamin's full approval. He arranged to write to Edinburgh, and relieve the 
lawyer's anxieties by that day's post.
The one last thing now left to be settled related to our plans for returning to 
England. The doctors were the authorities on this subject. I promised to consult 
them about it at their next visit to Eustace.



"Have you anything more to say to me?" Benjamin inquired, as he opened his 
writing-case.
I thought of Miserrimus Dexter and Ariel; and I inquired if he had heard any 
news of them lately. My old friend sighed, and warned me that I had touched on a 
painful subject.
"The best thing that can happen to that unhappy man is likely to happen," he 
said. "The one change in him is a change that threatens paralysis. You may hear 
of his death before you get back to England."
"And Ariel?" I asked.
"Quite unaltered," Benjamin answered. "Perfectly happy so long as she is with 
'the Master.' From all I can hear of her, poor soul, she doesn't reckon Dexter 
among moral beings. She laughs at the idea of his dying; and she waits 
patiently, in the firm persuasion that he will recognize her again."
Benjamin's news saddened and silenced me. I left him to his letter.



CHAPTER L.
THE LAST OF THE STORY.



In ten days more we returned to England, accompanied by Benjamin.
Mrs. Macallan's house in London offered us ample accommodation. We gladly 
availed ourselves of her proposal, when she invited us to stay with her until 
our child was born, and our plans for the future were arranged.
The sad news from the asylum (for which Benjamin had prepared my mind at Paris) 
reached me soon after our return to England. Miserrimus Dexter's release from 
the burden of life had come to him by slow degrees. A few hours before he 
breathed his last he rallied for a while, and recognized Ariel at his bedside. 
He feebly pronounced her name, and looked at her, and asked for me. They thought 
of sending for me, but it was too late. Before the messenger could be 
dispatched, he said, with a touch of his old self-importance, "Silence, all of 
you! my brains are weary; I am going to sleep." He closed his eyes in slumber, 
and never awoke again. So for this man too the end came mercifully, without 
grief or pain! So that strange and many-sided life--with its guilt and its 
misery, its fitful flashes of poetry and humor, its fantastic gayety, cruelty, 
and vanity--ran its destined course, and faded out like a dream!
Alas for Ariel! She had lived for the Master--what more could she do, now the 
Master was gone? She could die for him.
They had mercifully allowed her to attend the funeral of Miserrimus Dexter--in 
the hope that the ceremony might avail to convince her of his death. The 
anticipation was not realized; she still persisted in denying that "the Master" 
had left her. They were obliged to restrain the poor creature by force when the 
coffin was lowered into the grave; and they could only remove her from the 
cemetery by the same means when the burial-service was over. From that time her 
life alternated, for a few weeks, between fits of raving delirium and intervals 
of lethargic repose. At the annual ball given in the asylum, when the strict 
superintendence of the patients was in some degree relaxed, the alarm was 
raised, a little before midnight, that Ariel was missing. The nurse in charge 
had left her asleep, and had yielded to the temptation of going downstairs to 
look at the dancing. When the woman returned to her post, Ariel was gone. The 
presence of strangers, and the confusion incidental to the festival, offered her 
facilities for escaping which would not have presented themselves at any other 
time. That night the search for her proved to be useless. The next morning 
brought with it the last touching and terrible tidings of her. She had strayed 
back to the burial-ground; and she had been found toward sunrise, dead of cold 
and exposure, on Miserrimus Dexter's grave. Faithful to the last, Ariel had 
followed the Master! Faithful to the last, Ariel had died on the Master's grave!



Having written these sad words, I turn willingly to a less painful theme.
Events had separated me from Major Fitz-David, after the date of the 
dinner-party which had witnessed my memorable meeting with Lady Clarinda. From 
that time I heard little or nothing of the Major; and I am ashamed to say I had 
almost entirely forgotten him--when I was reminded of the modern Don Juan by the 
amazing appearance of wedding-cards, addressed to me at my mother-in-law's 
house! The Major had settled in life at last. And, more wonderful still, the 
Major had chosen as the lawful ruler of his household and himself--"the future 
Queen of Song," the round-eyed, overdressed young lady with the strident soprano 
voice!
We paid our visit of congratulation in due form; and we really did feel for 
Major Fitz-David.
The ordeal of marriage had so changed my gay and gallant admirer of former times 
that I hardly knew him again. He had lost all his pretensions to youth: he had 
become, hopelessly and undisguisedly, an old man. Standing behind the chair on 
which his imperious young wife sat enthroned, he looked at her submissively 
between every two words that he addressed to me, as if he waited for her 
permission to open his lips and speak. Whenever she interrupted him--and she did 
it, over and over again, without ceremony--he submitted with a senile docility 
and admiration, at once absurd and shocking to see.
"Isn't she beautiful?" he said to me (in his wife's hearing!). "What a figure, 
and what a voice! You remember her voice? It's a loss, my dear lady, an 
irretrievable loss, to the operatic stage! Do you know, when I think what that 
grand creature might have done, I sometimes ask myself if I really had any right 
to marry her. I feel, upon my honor I feel, as if I had committed a fraud on the 
public!"
As for the favored object of this quaint mixture of admiration and regret, she 
was pleased to receive me graciously, as an old friend. While Eustace was 
talking to the Major, the bride drew me aside out of their hearing, and 
explained her motives for marrying, with a candor which was positively 
shameless.
"You see we are a large family at home, quite unprovided for!" this odious young 
woman whispered in my ear. "It's all very well about my being a 'Queen of Song' 
and the rest of it. Lord bless you, I have been often enough to the opera, and I 
have learned enough of my music-master, to know what it takes to make a fine 
singer. I haven't the patience to work at it as those foreign women do: a parcel 
of brazen-faced Jezebels--I hate them! No! no! between you and me, it was a 
great deal easier to get the money by marrying the old gentleman. Here I am, 
provided for--and there's all my family provided for, too--and nothing to do but 
to spend the money. I am fond of my family; I'm a good daughter and sister--I 
am! See how I'm dressed; look at the furniture: I haven't played my cards badly, 
have I? It's a great advantage to marry an old man--you can twist him round your 
little finger. Happy? Oh, yes! I'm quite happy; and I hope you are, too. Where 
are you living now? I shall call soon, and have a long gossip with you. I always 
had a sort of liking for you, and (now I'm as good as you are) I want to be 
friends."
I made a short and civil reply to this; determining inwardly that when she did 
visit me she should get no further than the house-door. I don't scruple to say 
that I was thoroughly disgusted with her. When a woman sells herself to a man, 
that vile bargain is none the less infamous (to my mind) because it happens to 
be made under the sanction of the Church and the Law.
As I sit at the desk thinking, the picture of the Major and his wife vanishes 
from my memory--and the last scene in my story comes slowly into view.
The place is my bedroom. The persons (both, if you will be pleased to excuse 
them, in bed) are myself and my son. He is already three weeks old; and he is 
now lying fast asleep by his mother's side. My good Uncle Starkweather is coming 
to London to baptize him. Mrs. Macallan will be his godmother; and his 
godfathers will be Benjamin and Mr. Playmore. I wonder whether my christening 
will pass off more merrily than my wedding?
The doctor has just left the house, in some little perplexity about me. He has 
found me reclining as usual (latterly) in my arm-chair; but on this particular 
day he has detected symptoms of exhaustion, which he finds quite unaccountable 
under the circumstances, and which warn him to exert his authority by sending me 
back to my bed.
The truth is that I have not taken the doctor into my confidence. There are two 
causes for those signs of exhaustion which have surprised my medical 
attendant--and the names of them are--Anxiety and Suspense.
On this day I have at last summoned courage enough to perform the promise which 
I made to my husband in Paris. He is informed, by this time, how his wife's 
Confession was discovered. He knows (on Mr. Playmore's authority) that the 
letter may be made the means, if he so will it, of publicly vindicating his 
innocence in a Court of Law. And, last and most important of all, he is now 
aware that the Confession itself has been kept a sealed secret from him, out of 
compassionate regard for his own peace of mind, as well as for the memory of the 
unhappy woman who was once his wife.
These necessary disclosures I have communicated to my husband--not by word of 
mouth; when the time came, I shrank from speaking to him personally of his first 
wife--but by a written statement of the circumstances, taken mainly out of my 
letters received in Paris from Benjamin and Mr. Playmore. He has now had ample 
time to read all that I have written to him, and to reflect on it in the 
retirement of his own study. I am waiting, with the fatal letter in my hand--and 
my mother-in-law is waiting in the next room to me--to hear from his own lips 
whether he decides to break the seal or not.
The minutes pass; and still we fail to hear his footstep on the stairs. My 
doubts as to which way his decision may turn affect me more and more uneasily 
the longer I wait. The very possession of the letter, in the present excited 
state of my nerves, oppresses and revolts me. I shrink from touching it or 
looking at it. I move it about restlessly from place to place on the bed, and 
still I cannot keep it out of my mind. At last, an odd fancy strikes me. I lift 
up one of the baby's hands, and put the letter under it--and so associate that 
dreadful record of sin and misery with something innocent and pretty that seems 
to hallow and to purify it.
The minutes pass; the half-hour longer strikes from the clock on the 
chimney-piece; and at last I hear him! He knocks softly, and opens the door.
He is deadly pale: I fancy I can detect traces of tears on his cheeks. But no 
outward signs of agitation escape him as he takes his seat by my side. I can see 
that he has waited until he could control himself--for my sake.
He takes my hand, and kisses me tenderly.
"Valeria!" he says; "let me once more ask you to forgive what I said and did in 
the bygone time. If I understand nothing else, my love, I understand this: The 
proof of my innocence has been found; and I owe it entirely to the courage and 
the devotion of my wife!"
I wait a little, to enjoy the full luxury of hearing him say those words--to 
revel in the love and the gratitude that moisten his dear eyes as they look at 
me. Then I rouse my resolution, and put the momentous question on which our 
future depends.
"Do you wish to see the letter, Eustace?"
Instead of answering directly, he questions me in his turn.
"Have you got the letter here?"
"Yes."
"Sealed up?"
"Sealed up."
He waits a little, considering what he is going to say next before he says it,
"Let me be sure that I know exactly what it is I have to decide," he proceeds. 
"Suppose I insist on reading the letter--?"
There I interrupt him. I know it is my duty to restrain myself. But I cannot do 
my duty.
"My darling, don't talk of reading the letter! Pray, pray spare yourself--"
He holds up his hand for silence.
"I am not thinking of myself," he says. "I am thinking of my dead wife. If I 
give up the public vindication of my innocence, in my own lifetime--if I leave 
the seal of the letter unbroken--do you say, as Mr. Playmore says, that I shall 
be acting mercifully and tenderly toward the memory of my wife?"
"Oh, Eustace, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt of it!"
"Shall I be making some little atonement for any pain that I may have 
thoughtlessly caused her to suffer in her lifetime?"
"Yes! yes!"
"And, Valeria--shall I please You?"
"My darling, you will enchant me!"
"Where is the letter?"
"In your son's hand, Eustace."
He goes around to the other side of the bed, and lifts the baby's little pink 
hand to his lips. For a while he waits so, in sad and secret communion with 
himself. I see his mother softly open the door, and watch him as I am watching 
him. In a moment more our suspense is at an end. With a heavy sigh, he lays the 
child's hand back again on the sealed letter; and by that one little action says 
(as if in words) to his son--"I leave it to You!"



And so it ended! Not as I thought it would end; not perhaps as you thought it 
would end. What do we know of our own lives? What do we know of the fulfillment 
of our dearest wishes? God knows--and that is best.
Must I shut up the paper? Yes. There is nothing more for you to read or for me 
to say.
Except this--as a postscript. Don't bear hardly, good people, on the follies and 
the errors of my husband's life. Abuse me as much as you please. But pray think 
kindly of Eustace for my sake.






END OF "THE LAW AND THE LADY."
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