“Did you hurt yourself then?  I am sure you are in pain.”

“I?  Never less free from it, with many thanks to you.  What made you think so?”

“I heard you breathe so hard, and quite stamp your feet, I thought.  I suppose it was fancy.”

It was not fancy, nevertheless.  Major Campbell was stamping down something; and succeeded too in crushing it.

They walked on toward the car, Valencia and Headley following them:  ere they arrived at the place where they were to meet it, it was quite dark:  but what was more important, the car was not there.

“The stupid man must have mistaken his orders, and gone home.”

“Or let his horse go home of itself, while he was asleep inside.  He was more than half tipsy when we started.”

So spoke the Major, divining the exact truth.  There was nothing to be done but to walk the four miles home, and let the two truants follow as they could.

“We shall have plenty of time for our educational lecture,” said Lucia.

“Plenty of time to waste, then, my clear lady.”

“Oh, I never talk with you five minutes—­I do not know why—­without feeling wiser and happier.  I envy Valencia for having seen so much of you of late.”

Little thought poor Lucia, as she spoke those innocent words, that within four yards of her, crouched behind the wall, his face and every limb writhing with mingled curiosity and rage, was none other but her husband.

He had given place to the devil:  and the devil (for the “superstitious” and “old-world” notion which attributes such frenzies to the devil has not yet been superseded by a better one) had entered into him, and concentrated all the evil habits and passions which he had indulged for years into one flaming hell within him.

Miserable man!  His torments were sevenfold:  and if he had sinned, he was at least punished.  Not merely by all which a husband has a right to feel in such a case, or fancies that he has a right; not merely by tortured vanity and self-conceit, by the agony of seeing any man preferred to him, which to a man of Elsley’s character was of itself unbearable;—­not merely by the loss of trust in one whom he hail once trusted utterly:—­ but, over and above all, and worst of all, by the feeling of shame, self-reproach, self-hatred, which haunts a jealous man, and which ought to haunt him; for few men lose the love of women who have once loved them, save by their own folly or baseness:—­by the recollection that he had traded on her trust; that he had drugged his own conscience with the fancy that she must love him always, let him do what he would; and had neglected and insulted her affection, because he fancied, in his conceit, that it was inalienable.  And with the loss of self-respect, came recklessness of it, and drove him on, as it has jealous men in all ages, to meannesses unspeakable, which have made them for centuries, poor wretches, the butts of worthless playwrights, and the scorn of their fellow-men.