up
hunting, he deserted the "Red Lion"; if he went out of doors, it was but
a step; he hovered about the place to see if messages came or went; and
he spent hours in his wife's bedroom, watching her, grim, silent, and
sombre, to detect her inmost heart. His flesh wasted visibly, and his
ruddy color paled. Hell was in his heart. Ay, two hells: jealousy and
suspense.

Mrs. Gaunt saw directly that something was amiss, and erelong she
divined what it was.

But, if he was jealous, she was proud as Lucifer. So she met his
ever-watchful eye with the face of a marble statue.

Only in secret her heart quaked and yearned, and she shed many a furtive
tear, and was sore, sore perplexed.

Meantime Ryder was playing with her husband's anguish like a cat with a
mouse.

Upon the pretence of some petty discovery or other, she got him out day
after day into the Grove, and, to make him believe in her candor and
impartiality, would give him feeble reasons for thinking his wife loved
him still; taking care to overpower these reasons with some little piece
of strong good-sense and subtle observation.

It is the fate of moral poisoners to poison themselves as well as their
victims. This is a just retribution, and it fell upon this female Iago.
Her wretched master now loved his wife to distraction, yet hated her to
the death: and Ryder loved her master passionately, yet hated him
intensely, by fits and starts.

These secret meetings on which she had counted so, what did she gain by
them? She saw that, with all her beauty, intelligence, and zeal for him,
she was nothing to him still. He suspected, he sometimes hated his wife,
but he was always full of her. There was no getting any other wedge into
his heart.

This so embittered Ryder that one day she revenged herself on him.

He had been saying that no earthly torment could equal his: all his
watching had shown him nothing for certain. "O," said he, "if I could
only get proof of her innocence, or proof of her guilt! Anything better
than the misery of doubt. It gnaws my heart, it consumes my flesh. I
can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't sit down. I envy the dead that lie at
peace. O my heart! my heart!"

"And all for a woman that is not young, nor half so handsome as
yourself. Well, sir, I'll try and cure you of your _doubt_ if that is
what torments you. When you threatened that Leonard, he got his orders
to come here no more. But _she_ visited him at his place again and
again."

"'