his bed at the time, and----"

"Now, Mary, my dear good soul," said Francis with the old easy
superiority which he had always assumed to her, "will you just hold your
tongue, and let me tell my own tale? You have done your best for me, but
you know I always told you I was not to be trusted to lie about it if
anybody appealed to me to evidence. I really have not the strength to
keep it up. I want at least to die like a gentleman."

"I am not at all sure that you are going to die," said Maurice quietly,
with his finger on the sick man's pulse. Francis had put off the vacant
expression, and his eyes had lighted up. He was evidently quite himself
again.

"No?" he said easily. "Well, I would rather die, if it's all the same to
you; because I fancy I shall have to be put under restraint if I do
live. I don't always know what I am doing in the least. I know now,
though. You can bear me out, doctor, isn't my brain in a very queer
state?"

"I fear it is," said Maurice.

"Just so. I am subject to fits of rage in which I don't know what I am
doing. And on that night when Oliver came to see me, after Brooke had
gone away, I got into one of these frenzies and followed him downstairs,
picking up Brooke's stick on the way and beating poor Oliver about the
head with it.... You know well enough how he was found. I only came to
myself when it was done. And then, my wife--with all a woman's
ingenuity--bundled me into bed, swore that I had never left it, and that
Caspar Brooke had done it. It was a lie--she told me so afterwards. Eh,
Mary?--Forgive me, old girl: I've got you into trouble now; but that is
better than letting an innocent man swing for what I have done,
especially when that man is the husband of one who was so kind to
me----"

"And the father of Lesley Brooke," said Maurice, looking steadfastly at
Mary Trent.

A shudder ran through the woman's frame. Then she covered
her face with her hands and flung herself down at her husband's side.

"Oh Francis, my dear, my dear!" she said. "I did it for you."

And then for an instant there was silence in the room, save for her
heavy sobs. Francis lay still but patted her with his thin fingers, and
looked at Caspar Brooke's wife with his large, unnaturally bright, dark
eyes.

"She is a good soul in spite of it all," he said, addressing himself to
Lady Alice. "And she did it out of love for me. You would have done as
much for your husband, perhaps, if you loved him--but I have