o these shameful and grotesque happenings Theodore Carden gave
scarce a thought, for it was when he found himself alone in the
drawing-room or library that his solitude would become stealthily
invaded by an invisible and impalpable wraith. So disorganised had
become his nerves, so pitiable the state of his body and mind, that
constantly he seemed conscious of a faint, sweet odour, that of wood
violets, a scent closely associated in his thoughts with Pansy
Garvice, with the woman whom he now knew to be a murderess. He came at
last to long for a tangible delusion, for the sight of a bodily shape
which he could tell himself was certainly not there. But no such
relief was vouchsafed him; and yet once, when sitting in the
drawing-room, trying to read a book, he had felt a rounded cheek laid
suddenly to his; a curl of silken, scented hair had touched his
neck....

Terrifying as was the peopled solitude of his evenings, Carden dreaded
their close, for at night, during the whole of each long night, the
woman from whom he now felt so awful a repulsion held him prisoner.
From the fleeting doze of utter exhaustion he would be awakened by
feeling the pressure of Pansy's soft, slender arms about his neck;
they would wind themselves round his shuddering body, enclosing him
slowly, inexorably, till he felt as if he must surely die under their
gyves-like pressure. Again--and this, perhaps, was what he learned to
dread in an especial degree--he would be suddenly roused by Pansy's
liquid, laughing voice, whispering things of horror in his ear; it was
then, and then only, that he found courage to speak, courage to assure
her, and to assure himself, that he was in no sense her accomplice,
that he had had naught to do with old Garvice's death; but then there
would come answer, in the eager tones he remembered so well, and the
awful words found unwilling echo in his heart: "Yes, yes, indeed you
helped!"

* * * * *

And now the last day, or rather the last night, had come, for the next
morning Theodore Carden was to leave Birmingham, he hoped for ever,
for New Zealand.

The few people he had been compelled to see had been strangely kind;
quiet and gentle, as folk, no doubt, feel bound to be when in the
presence of one condemned. As for Major Lane, he was stretching--no
one knew it better than Carden himself--a great point in allowing the
young man to leave England before the Garvice trial.

During those l