Again they were silent, and again Marston resumed—­

“Doctor Danvers, don’t mistake me,” he said, turning sharply, and fixing his eyes with a strange expression upon his companion.  “I dread nothing human; I fear neither death, nor disgrace, nor eternity; I have no secrets to keep—­no exposures to apprehend; but I dread—­I dread—­”

He paused, scowled darkly, as if stung with pain, turned away, muttering to himself, and gradually became much excited.

“I can’t tell you now, sir, and I won’t,” he said, abruptly and fiercely, and with a countenance darkened with a wild and appalling rage that was wholly unaccountable.  “I see you searching me with your eyes.  Suspect what you will, sir, you shan’t inveigle me into admissions.  Aye, pry—­whisper—­stare—­question, conjecture, sir—­I suppose I must endure the world’s impertinence, but d——­n me if I gratify it.”

It would not be easy to describe Dr. Danvers’ astonishment at this unaccountable explosion of fury.  He was resolved, however, to bear his companion’s violence with temper.

They rode on slowly for fully ten minutes in utter silence, except that Marston occasionally muttered to himself, as it seemed, in excited abstraction.  Danvers had at first felt naturally offended at the violent and insulting tone in which he had been so unexpectedly and unprovokedly addressed; but this feeling of irritation was but transient, and some fearful suspicions as to Marston’s sanity flitted through his mind.  In a calmer and more dogged tone, his companion now addressed him:—­

“There is little profit you see, doctor, in worrying me about your religion,” said Marston. “it is but sowing the wind, and reaping the whirlwind; and, to say the truth, the longer you pursue it, the less I am in the mood to listen.  If ever you are cursed and persecuted as I have been, you will understand how little tolerant of gratuitous vexations and contradictions a man may become.  We have squabbled over religion long enough, and each holds his own faith still.  Continue to sun yourself in your happy delusions, and leave me untroubled to tread the way of my own dark and cheerless destiny.”

Thus saying, he made a sullen gesture of farewell, and spurring his horse, crossed the broken fence at the roadside, and so, at a listless pace, through gaps and by farm-roads, penetrated towards his melancholy and guilty home.

Two years had now passed since the decisive event which had forever separated Marston from her who had loved him so devotedly and so fatally; two years to him of disappointment, abasement, and secret rage; two years to her of gentle and heart-broken submission to the chastening hand of heaven.  At the end of this time she died.  Marston read the letter that announced the event with a stern look, and silently, but the shock he felt was terrific.  No man is so self-abandoned to despair and degradation, that at some casual moment thoughts of amendment—­some