ght."

He prefaced the coming remarks by a warning look at her widow's dress.

"Now you have got your luggage," he began, gravely, "permit me to
suggest putting that cap away, and wearing another gown."

"Why?"

"Do you remember what you told me a day or two since?" asked the doctor.
"You said there was a chance of Mr. Armadale's dying in my Sanitarium?"

"I will say it again, if you like."

"A more unlikely chance," pursued the doctor, deaf as ever to all
awkward interruptions, "it is hardly possible to imagine! But as long
as it is a chance at all, it is worth considering. Say, then, that he
dies--dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and makes a Coroner's Inquest
necessary in the house. What is our course in that case? Our course is
to preserve the characters to which we have committed ourselves--you
as his widow, and I as the witness of your marriage--and, _in_ those
characters, to court the fullest inquiry. In the entirely improbable
event of his dying just when we want him to die, my idea--I might even
say, my resolution--is to admit that we knew of his resurrection from
the sea; and to acknowledge that we instructed Mr. Bashwood to entrap
him into this house, by means of a false statement about Miss Milroy.
When the inevitable questions follow, I propose to assert that he
exhibited symptoms of mental alienation shortly after your marriage;
that his delusion consisted in denying that you were his wife, and in
declaring that he was engaged to be married to Miss Milroy; that you
were in such terror of him on this account, when you heard he was alive
and coming back, as to be in a state of nervous agitation that required
my care; that at your request, and to calm that nervous agitation, I saw
him professionally, and got him quietly into the house by a humoring of
his delusion, perfectly justifiable in such a case; and, lastly, that I
can certify his brain to have been affected by one of those mysterious
disorders, eminently incurable, eminently fatal, in relation to which
medical science is still in the dark. Such a course as this (in the
remotely possible event which we are now supposing) would be, in your
interests and mine, unquestionably the right course to take; and such a
dress as _that_ is, just as certainly, under existing circumstances, the
wrong dress to wear."

"Shall I take it off at once?" she asked, rising from the
breakfast-table, without a word of remark on what had just been said to
her.

"Anytim