t, and I will never trouble you further about the
past."

"Yes;--that is it. You will never trouble me!" She glanced up into
his face and saw there the old look which he used to wear when he was
at Willesden and at Casalunga; and there had come again the old tone
in which he had spoken to her in the bitterness of his wrath:--the
look and the tone, which had made her sure that he was a madman. "The
craft and subtlety of women passes everything!" he said. "And so at
last I am to tell you that from the beginning it has been my doing. I
will never say so, though I should die in refusing to do it."

After that there was no possibility of further conversation, for
there came upon him a fit of coughing, and then he swooned; and in
half-an-hour he was in bed, and Dr. Nevill was by his side. "You must
not speak to him at all on this matter," said the doctor. "But if he
speaks to me?" she asked. "Let it pass," said the doctor. "Let the
subject be got rid of with as much ease as you can. He is very ill
now, and even this might have killed him." Nevertheless, though this
seemed to be stern, Dr. Nevill was very kind to her, declaring that
the hallucination in her husband's mind did not really consist of a
belief in her infidelity, but arose from an obstinate determination
to yield nothing. "He does not believe it; but he feels that were he
to say as much, his hands would be weakened and yours strengthened."

"Can he then be in his sane mind?"

"In one sense all misconduct is proof of insanity," said the doctor.
"In his case the weakness of the mind has been consequent upon the
weakness of the body."

Three days after that Nora visited Twickenham from Monkhams in
obedience to a telegram from her sister. "Louis," she said, "had
become so much weaker, that she hardly dared to be alone with him.
Would Nora come to her?" Nora came of course, and Hugh met her at the
station, and brought her with him to the cottage. He asked whether
he might see Trevelyan, but was told that it would be better that
he should not. He had been almost continually silent since the last
dispute which he had with his wife; but he had given little signs
that he was always thinking of the manner in which he had been
brought home by her from Italy, and of the story she had told him
of her mode of inducing him to come. Hugh Stanbury had been her
partner in that struggle, and would probably be received, if not with
sullen silence, then with some attempt at rebuk