e to his bed, and the key in her pocket. Ah!' said one.

'And a blue phial therein--h'm!' said another.

'And spurge-laurel leaves among the hearth-ashes. Oh-oh!' said a third.

On his return home Sir William seemed to have aged years. But he said
nothing; indeed, it was a thing impossible. And from that hour a ghastly
estrangement began. She could not understand it, and simply waited. One
day he said, however, 'I must go abroad.'

'Why?' said she. 'William, have I offended you?'

'No,' said he; 'but I must go.'

She could coax little more out of him, and in itself there was nothing
unnatural in his departure, for he had been a wanderer from his youth. In
a few days he started off, apparently quite another man than he who had
rushed to her side so devotedly a few months before.

It is not known when, or how, the rumours, which were so thick in the
atmosphere around her, actually reached the Lady Penelope's ears, but
that they did reach her there is no doubt. It was impossible that they
should not; the district teemed with them; they rustled in the air like
night-birds of evil omen. Then a reason for her husband's departure
occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly
apparent. She dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples
could all be distinctly traced. An inner fire seemed to be withering her
away. Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails
of the threshers, though they had till lately been so round and so
elastic. She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return to
her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing
nothing of her ill-health, and never suspecting that the rumours had
reached her also, deemed absence best, and postponed his return awhile,
giving various good reasons for his delay.

At length, however, when the Lady Penelope had given birth to a still-
born child, her mother, the Countess, addressed a letter to Sir William,
requesting him to come back to her if he wished to see her alive; since
she was wasting away of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be
rather mental than physical. It was evident that his mother-in-law knew
nothing of the secret, for she lived at a distance; but Sir William
promptly hastened home, and stood beside the bed of his now dying wife.

'Believe me, William,' she said when they were alone, 'I am
innocent--innocent!'

'Of what?' said he. 'Heaven forbid that I sh