face change of any kind possessed him. He decided on staying at Salt
Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm (which he then looked upon as
a certainty) obliged him to alter his habits completely, once for all.
From Fulham he had gone, the next day, to attend the inquiry in Portland
Place. And to Fulham he returned, when he brought the wife who had been
forced upon him to her "home."

Such was the position of the tenant, and such were the arrangements
of the interior of the cottage, on the memorable evening when Anne
Silvester entered it as Geoffrey's wife.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.

THE NIGHT.

ON leaving Lady Lundie's house, Geoffrey called the first empty cab that
passed him. He opened the door, and signed to Anne to enter the vehicle.
She obeyed him mechanically. He placed himself on the seat opposite to
her, and told the man to drive to Fulham.

The cab started on its journey; husband and wife preserving absolute
silence. Anne laid her head back wearily, and closed her eyes. Her
strength had broken down under the effort which had sustained her from
the beginning to the end of the inquiry. Her power of thinking was gone.
She felt nothing, knew nothing, feared nothing. Half in faintness, half
in slumber, she had lost all sense of her own terrible position before
the first five minutes of the journey to Fulham had come to an end.

Sitting opposite to her, savagely self-concentrated in his own thoughts,
Geoffrey roused himself on a sudden. An idea had sprung to life in
his sluggish brain. He put his head out of the window of the cab, and
directed the driver to turn back, and go to an hotel near the Great
Northern Railway.

Resuming his seat, he looked furtively at Anne. She neither moved nor
opened her eyes--she was, to all appearance, unconscious of what had
happened. He observed her attentively. Was she really ill? Was the
time coming when he would be freed from her? He pondered over that
question--watching her closely. Little by little the vile hope in him
slowly died away, and a vile suspicion took its place. What, if this
appearance of illness was a pretense? What, if she was waiting to throw
him off his guard, and escape from him at the first opportunity? He put
his head out of the window again, and gave another order to the driver.
The cab diverged from the direct route, and stopped at a public house in
Holborn, kept (under an assumed name) by Perry the trainer.

Geoffrey wrote a line in pencil on his