admitted. "I see why
one might; but I can't do it myself." He paused and added, smiling, "I
suppose that's the weak point in my attitude."

"One of them," said Dick, but he said no more. There are limits to candid
discussion even among the closest friends; he could not tell Marchmont in
so many words that he wanted Quisante dead so as to be able to marry
Quisante's wife, however well aware of the fact he might be and Marchmont
might suspect him to be. Or, if he had said this, he could have said it
only in vigorous reproof, perhaps even in horror; and to this he was not
equal. For Dick was sorely torn. On the one hand he had never ceased to
hang on Quisante's words and to count on Quisante's deeds; on the other,
he had never acquitted himself of responsibility for a marriage which he
believed to have been most disastrous. Worst of all then for him was what
threatened now, an end of the illuminating words and the stirring deeds,
but no end to the marriage yet in sight. To him too death seemed the best
thing, unless that wonderful unlikely resurrection of activity and power
could come. And even then--Dick remembered the face of Quisante's wife as
she lied for him to her friends at Ashwood. The resurrection must be not
only with a renewed but with a transformed mind, if it were to bring
happiness, and to bring no more of things like that.

The world at large, conceiving that the last word had been said and the
last scene in which it was interested played, had soon turned its curious
eyes away from Quisante's sick bed, leaving only the gaze of the smaller
circle personally concerned in the dull and long-drawn-out ending of a
piece once so full of dramatic incident. But the world found itself
wrong, and all the eyes spun round in amazed staring when the sick man
leapt from his bed and declared that he was himself again. The news came
in paragraphs, to the effect that after another week's rest Mr. Quisante,
whose health had made a rapid and great improvement, hoped to return to
his Parliamentary duties and to fulfil the more urgent of his public
engagements. Here was matter enough for surprise, but it was needful to
add the fast-following well-authenticated stories of how the doctors had
protested, how Sir Rufus Beaming had washed his hands of the case, and
how Dr. Claud Manton had addressed an energetic warning to Lady May
Quisante. This last item came home most closely to the general feeling,
and the general voice asked what