e asked her some trivial questions. 'Yes, _Edmond_,'
she replied absently.

Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving
the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and
he determined to watch. The next midnight he feigned deep sleep, and
shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the
room in the dark. He slipped on some clothing and followed. At the
farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be
out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. He
stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed
on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door
of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and
Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck
of her Edmond, and her mouth on his. The shawl which she had thrown
round her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders, and her long white
robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a second statue
embracing the first. Between her kisses, she apostrophized it in a low
murmur of infantine tenderness:

'My only love--how could I be so cruel to you, my perfect one--so good
and true--I am ever faithful to you, despite my seeming infidelity! I
always think of you--dream of you--during the long hours of the day, and
in the night-watches! O Edmond, I am always yours!' Such words as
these, intermingled with sobs, and streaming tears, and dishevelled hair,
testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which Lord Uplandtowers
had not dreamed of her possessing.

'Ha, ha!' says he to himself. 'This is where we evaporate--this is where
my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve--ha, ha! This must be seen
to, verily!'

Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy;
though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem
of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife
as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently
as he had left it. When the Countess returned thither, shaken by spent
sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. The next
day he began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts
of the tutor who had travelled with his wife's first husband; this
gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammar-school at no great
distance fr