ve you given up the case?"

"As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case."

"And no hope of my getting divorced from her?"

"Wait a moment. Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere since they
were together at the Scotch inn?"

"Nowhere."

"As to the future, of course I can't say. As to the past, there is no
hope of your getting divorced from her."

"Thank you. Good-night."

"Good-night, Mr. Delamayn."

Fastened to her for life--and the law powerless to cut the knot.

He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it and
fixed it in his mind. Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm's letter, and read
it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.

Nothing could shake her devotion to him. Nothing would induce her to
marry another man. There she was--in her own words--dedicated to him:
waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his wife. There
also was his father, waiting (so far as _he_ knew, in the absence of
any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs. Glenarm as a
daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm's husband an income of his
own. As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man could desire. And nothing
in the way of it but the woman who had caught him in her trap--the woman
up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life.

He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.

There was open communication, on all sides, between the back garden and
the front. He walked round and round the cottage--now appearing in a
stream of light from a window; now disappearing again in the darkness.
The wind blew refreshingly over his bare head. For some minutes he went
round and round, faster and faster, without a pause. When he stopped
at last, it was in front of the cottage. He lifted his head slowly, and
looked up at the dim light in the window of Anne's room.

"How?" he said to himself. "That's the question. How?"

He went indoors again, and rang the bell. The servant-girl who answered
it started back at the sight of him. His florid color was all gone. His
eyes looked at her without appearing to see her. The perspiration was
standing on his forehead in great heavy drops.

"Are you ill, Sir?" said the girl.

He told her, with an oath, to hold her tongue and bring the brandy. When
she entered the room for the second time, he was standing with his back
to her, looking out at the night. He never moved when she put the bottle
on the table. She heard him mutteri