if the words were forced from her.
"I could not make her come, but I made her send you a message. She
told me to say that she forgave you, freely; that she would always
pray for you. She bade me tell you too that she would never be any
man's bride now."

It had been like the rending of body and soul to tell him this. As she
saw the condemned man's face quiver and flush at last out of its
impassiveness, she thought hell itself could hold no more hideous
torment.

He extended his arms:

"Now welcome death!" he exclaimed.

And she turned and fled down the passage as though driven upon this
last cry.

* * * * *

"E-h, he be a strange one!" said the jailer afterwards to his mate.
"If ye'd heard that poor lady sob as she went by! I've seen many a one
in the same case, but I was sore for her, I was that. And he--as
cool--joking with Robert over the hanging irons the next minute. 'New
sort of tailor I've got,' says he. 'Make them smart,' he says, 'since
I'm to wear them in so exalted a position.' So exalted a position,
that's what he says. 'And they've got to last me some long time, you
know,' says he."

"He'll be something worth looking at on Saturday. I could almost wish
he could ha' got off, only that it's a fine sight to see a real
gentleman go through it. Ah, it's they desperate villains has the
proper pluck!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

LAUNCHED ON THE GREAT WAVE

Sir Adrian made, at first personally, then through Miss O'Donoghue,
two attempts to induce his wife to return to Pulwick, or at any rate
to leave Lancaster on the next day. But the contempt, then the fury,
which she opposed to their reasoning rendered it worse than useless.

The very sight of her husband, indeed, seemed to exasperate the
unfortunate woman to such a degree that, in spite of his anxiety
concerning her, he resolved to spare her even to the consciousness of
his presence, and absented himself altogether from the house.

Miss O'Donoghue, unable to cope with a state of affairs at once so
distressing and so unbecoming, finally retired to her own apartment
with a book of piety and some gruel, and abandoned all further
endeavour to guide her unruly relations. So that Molly found herself
left to her own resources, in the guardianship of Rene, the only
company her misery could tolerate.

Three times she went to the castle, to be met each time with the
announcement that, by the express wish of the prisoner, no