on that threatened death the course which the secret craving of
her heart urged him to take? To do everything for him was not enough, if
the doubt still lurked that her heart was not in the doing. For now she
could no more ask coolly what she wished; the thing had come too near; it
was odious to have a thought except of saving him by all means and at
every cost; it was intolerable not to know at least that no part of the
impulse which drove him to his rebellion lay at her door, not to feel at
least that she had nothing but dread and horror for the threatened doom.
She had no love for him; it came home to her now with a strange new sense
of self-condemnation; she had married him for her own pleasure, because
he interested her and made life seem dull without him. She pleaded no
more that he had killed her love; it had never been there to kill. Had
she left him to find a woman who loved him in and for himself, not for
his doings, not for the interest of him, that woman might now be winning
him by love from the open jaws of death.

Yet again laughter, obstinate and irrepressible, shot often in a jarring
streak of inharmonious colour across the sombre fabric of her thoughts.
He was not only mad, not only splendid--he seemed both to her--he was
absurd too at moments, often when he was with Aunt Maria. Letters came in
great numbers, from political followers, from women prominent in society,
from constituents, from old Foster and Japhet Williams at Henstead, even
from puissant Lady Castlefort; they wondered, applauded, implored,
flattered, in every key of that sweet instrument called praise. Quisante
read them out, pluming and preening his feathers, strutting about,
crowing. He would repeat the passages he liked, asking his wife's
approbation; that he must have, it seemed. She gave it with what
heartiness she could, and laughed only in her sleeve. Surely a man facing
death could have forgotten all this? Not Alexander Quisante. He could
die, and die bravely; but the world must stand by his bedside. So till
the end, whenever that most uncertainly dated end might come, the old
mixture promised to go on, the great and small, the mean and grand, the
call for tears and throbs of the heart alternating with the obstinate
curling or curving of lips swift to respond to the vision of the
contemptible or the ludicrous.

But she had her appeal to make, the one thing, it seemed, she could do to
put herself at all in the right, the offer she