dropped them to add, " This is all. I will go
now." And she would have gone; but I
placed a chair in her way, so that I could
gently sink her into it.

Mr. George waited a little while, and then
said, " I hoped that this would not have been
—I am not adamant; although trouble and
desolation have driven me——" He checked
himself; for tears were welling up into his
wife's eyes, and tears were then to be very
much dreaded. " I know that I have escaped
ignominy, and that you have saved me. But
an ignominious death is better than an
ignominious life."

It was terrible to see her eyes move from
side to side like lightning, as if thought and
recollection and perplexed ideas were all
battling together in her brain. Mr. George
looked frightened. " I never saw a mad per-
son," Hockle remarked to me, "but I am
sure that the way she looked about—so quick
and wild, and yet without seeing anything
except what was going on in her mind—must
be just the way people look who are not in
their senses. It was awful."

Presently she spoke in an unearthly
whisper. Hockle could not, he said,
distinguish what she uttered; but the words
conveyed to Dornley something that changed
—roused him. He rose and clutched the front
of his hair fiercely, as if trying to crush in his
forehead. He kept on repeating the words
which his wife had, I suppose, whispered:
"Not dead of neglect, but stolen!" "Not
dead of neglect, but stolen! " With this
he went to her and took her hand tenderly;
but she- who coming into the room, seemed
ready to fall into his arms and pour out a
torrent of love that would have swept away
every trace of past grief- now appeared
insensible to her husband's caress. She did
not return the pressure of his hand. She
smiled sweetly on him, but without recognition;
the power of distinguishing him as
her husband had left her.

How Dr. Bole came upon the scene at this
agonising crisis, Hockle's narrative was too
confused for me to understand. Perhaps,
having travelled back post from Bath, with
the news of old Mr. Dornley's death after
having cut off the entail of the Crookstone
estates (the doctor thought illegally), Vollum
had met him in the street and told him where
the disinherited gentleman was to be found.
His whole attention was, however, absorbed
by his patient. She smiled on him too;
calmly, mechanically, but did not speak a
word. The doctor gave me a look which
told me to watch her while he took Mr.
Dornley to the window.

"I have heard the manner of your acquittal,"
he said, in a low tone, " and can thoroughly
reconcile it with your wife's truthfulness."

"God bless you, doctor! " Dornley took
Bole's hand in both his own, and listened with
even more eagerness than he showed, when
waiting the verdict of the jury.

"You know," pursued the physician, " how
her whole mind and soul were set upon
your returning to her from Italy on the
ninth of June. You know also her
delicate condition at that time; but you do not
know that, after she recovered from the
shock inflicted by your non-appearance, and
the event it brought on, she continued under
the delusion—one of those delusions not
uncommon to young mothers—that you were
present, and she talked to the air as if she
were talking to you; conscious of no other
person's presence, not even the presence of
her baby."

Dornley groaned: " How do you know all
this?—you you were not present."

"No; but, as the delusion remained—lasts
indeed, to this moment—I took pains to trace
its origin. Your wife has remained sound
and sensible on every subject, except that
one conviction of your presence on the ninth
of June; and I, as a medical adviser, always
enjoined her never to speak of the circum-
stance, lest her enemies should get her
pronounced insane. She as firmly believed what
she swore to be true, as that I believe it is a
delusion."

When the husband, on hearing this, clasped
his wife in his arms, kissed her, called her by
every endearing name; and when Hockle
saw that it was too late, and that she was
insensible to his caresses, it was more, he said,
than he could bear; and, taking charge of
the papers, he left the room.

That night stern military duty obliged
Hockle to leave Derby; and, in less than
a week, he was on the sea bound for Bombay.
Another ship from another port was at the
same time bearing George Dornley, alone,
broken down and broken-hearted, to the West
Indies, where Lord Wordley had kindly
provided him with honourable banishment, on an
estate of his own. Dr. Bole had strongly
advised the separation from his wife, as best
calculated to promote her eventual recovery;
of which he spoke very confidently. She
was placed in the best private asylum in the
county.

Thus far the riding-master's information;
the rest I learnt from other sources during a
subsequent visit to Matlock-Bath.

CHAPTER THE TENTH.

ON taking possession of the Crookstone
Hall estate, Calder Dornley found that his
late father's profusion had considerably
embarrassed it, and the first year was passed by
him and his wife in schemes of parsimony for
emancipating it from debt. In the second
year they were rich; for Sir Bayle Stonard
had died, and Stonard Abbey, with an enormous
hoard of personal wealth, came into
their possession. But—being rich, and
feeling that all in the world they had ever
hoped-for was theirs; shunning society;