e
inbred grace and beauty in the movement of her limbs.

"Do you wish to speak to me?" she asked; her mind far away from him, and
her eyes looking at him vacantly as she put the question.

He roused his courage as he had never roused it in her presence yet.

"Don't drive me to despair!" he cried, with a startling abruptness.
"Don't look at me in that way, now I have found it out!"

"What have you found out?" she asked, with a momentary surprise on her
face, which faded from it again before he could gather breath enough to
go on.

"Mr. Armadale is not the man who took you away from me," he answered.
"Mr. Midwinter is the man. I found it out in your face yesterday. I
see it in your face now. Why did you sign your name 'Armadale' when you
wrote to me? Why do you call yourself 'Mrs. Armadale' still?"

He spoke those bold words at long intervals, with an effort to resist
her influence over him, pitiable and terrible to see.

She looked at him for the first time with softened eyes. "I wish I had
pitied you when we first met," she said, gently, "as I pity you now."

He struggled desperately to go on and say the words to her which he had
strung himself to the pitch of saying on the drive from the terminus.
They were words which hinted darkly at his knowledge of her past life;
words which warned her--do what else she might, commit what crimes she
pleased--to think twice before she deceived and deserted him again. In
those terms he had vowed to himself to address her. He had the phrases
picked and chosen; he had the sentences ranged and ordered in his mind;
nothing was wanting but to make the one crowning effort of speaking
them--and, even now, after all he had said and all he had dared, the
effort was more than he could compass! In helpless gratitude, even for
so little as her pity, he stood looking at her, and wept the silent,
womanish tears that fall from old men's eyes.

She took his hand and spoke to him--with marked forbearance, but without
the slightest sign of emotion on her side.

"You have waited already at my request," she said. "Wait till to-morrow,
and you will know all. If you trust nothing else that I have told you,
you may trust what I tell you now. _It will end to-night_."

As she said the words, the doctor's step was heard on the stairs. Mr.
Bashwood drew back from her, with his heart beating fast in unutterable
expectation. "It will end to-night!" he repeated to himself, under his
breath, as he move