Without further comment, the fact is left for the consideration of all readers; only let them not be too hard upon Elsley and Lucia, if, finding themselves sometimes literally at their wits’ end, they went beyond their poor wits into the region where foolish things are said and done.

Moreover, Elsley’s ill-temper (as well as Lucia’s) had its excuses in physical ill-health.  Poor fellow!  Long years of sedentary work had begun to tell upon him; and while Tom Thurnall’s chest, under the influence of hard work and oxygen, measured round perhaps six inches more than it had done sixteen years ago, Elsley’s, thanks to stooping and carbonic acid, measured six inches less.  Short breath, lassitude, loss of appetite, heartburn, and all that fair company of miseries which Mr. Cockle and his Antibilious Pills profess to cure, are no cheering bosom friends; but when a man’s breast-bone is gradually growing into his stomach, they will make their appearance; and small blame to him whose temper suffers from their gentle hints that he has a mortal body as well as an immortal soul.

But most fretting of all was the discovery that Lucia knew—­if not all about his original name—­still enough to keep him in dread lest she should learn more.

It was now twelve months and more that this new terror had leapt up and stared in his face.  He had left a letter about—­a thing which he was apt to do—­in which the Whitbury lawyer made some allusions to his little property; and he was sure that Lucia had seen it; the hated name of Briggs certainly she had not seen; for Elsley had torn it out the moment he opened the letter:  but she had seen enough, as he soon found, to be certain that he had, at some time or other, passed under a different name.

If Lucia had been a more thoughtful or high-minded woman, she would have gone straight to her husband, and quietly and lovingly asked him to tell her all:  but, in her left-handed Irish fashion, she kept the secret to herself, and thought it a very good joke to have him in her power, and to be able to torment him about that letter when he got out of temper.  It never occurred, however, to her that his present name was the feigned one.  She fancied that he had, in some youthful escapade, assumed the name to which the lawyer alluded.  So the next time he was cross, she tried laughingly the effect of her newly-discovered spell; and was horror-struck at the storm which she evoked.  In a voice of thunder, Elsley commanded her never to mention the subject again; and showed such signs of terror and remorse, that she obeyed him from that day forth, except when now and then she lost her temper as completely, too, as he.  Little she thought, in her heedlessness, what a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, ever deepening and spreading, she had put between his heart and hers.