d in by the others,
one of whom had known the Doctor for years. Accordingly they compromised
by postponing all opinion till they had themselves interrogated the
Doctor, and I was detailed to bring him before them the next afternoon.

He came without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
which elapsed between their leaving Lafayette Place and entering
Headquarters, I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found
the study equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but
hopeless, and his eye, which should have shown a wild glimmer if there
was truth in his wife's hypothesis, was dark and unfathomable, but
neither frenzied nor uncertain. He spake but once and listened to
nothing, though now and then his wife moved as if to attract his
attention, and once even stole her hand toward his, in the tender hope
that he would feel its approach and accept her sympathy. But he was deaf
as well as blind; and sat wrapped up in thoughts which she, I know,
would have given worlds to penetrate.

Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from
which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he,
betrayed that some misunderstanding, deeper than any I had previously
suspected, drew its intangible veil between them and made the near
proximity in which they sat, at once a heart-piercing delight and an
unspeakable pain. What was this misunderstanding? and what was the
character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his
direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was
not connected with the position in which he had put himself towards the
police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus interpret
the expression of frantic question which now and then contracted her
features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless orbs, and strove
to read, in his firm-set lips, the meaning of those assertions she could
only ascribe to a loss of reason.

The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
and she, stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the
carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had been
previously evident in her manner.

As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.

"There is another and a deeper tragedy underly