he possibility of his wife's being yet alive would
occasionally occur to him, but he always cast the thought from him as a
folly in which he dared not indulge lest it should grow upon him and
unman him altogether. Better she were dead than suffering what his
cruelty might have driven her to: he had weakened her self-respect by
insult, and then driven her out helpless.

People said he took the loss of his wife coolly; but the fact was that,
in every quiet way, he had been doing all man could do to obtain what
information concerning her there might possibly be to be had. Naturally
he would have his proceedings as little as possible in the public mouth;
and to employ the police or the newspapers in such a quest was too
horrible. But he had made inquiries in all directions. He had put a
question or two to Polwarth, but at that time he _knew_ nothing of her,
and did not feel bound to disclose his suspicions. Not knowing to what
it might not expose her, he would not betray the refuge of a woman with
a woman. Faber learned what every body had learned, and for a time was
haunted by the horrible expectation of further news from the lake. Every
knock at the door made him start and turn pale. But the body had not
floated, and would not now.

We have seen that, in the light thrown upon her fault from the revived
memory of his own, a reaction had set in: the tide of it grew fiercer as
it ran. He had deposed her idol--the God who she believed could pardon,
and the bare belief in whom certainly could comfort her; he had taken
the place with her of that imaginary, yet, for some, necessary being;
but when, in the agony of repentant shame, she looked to him for the
pardon he alone could give her, he had turned from her with loathing,
contempt, and insult! He was the one in the whole-earth, who, by saying
to her _Let it be forgotten_, could have lifted her into life and hope!
She had trusted in him, and he, an idol indeed, had crumbled in the
clinging arms of her faith! Had she not confessed to him what else he
would never have known, humbling herself in a very ecstasy of
repentance? Was it not an honor to any husband to have been so trusted
by his wife? And had he not from very scorn refused to strike her! Was
she not a woman still? a being before whom a man, when he can no longer
worship, must weep? Could _any_ fault, ten times worse than she had
committed, make her that she was no woman? that he, merely as a man,
owed her nothing? Her