Lady Deppingham and Mrs. Browne should not be misunderstood by the reader.  They loved their husbands—­I am quite sure of that; but they were tired of seeing no one else, tired of talking to no one else.  Moreover, in support of this one-sided assertion, they experienced from time to time the most melancholy attacks of jealousy.  The drag of time hung so heavily upon them that any struggle to cast it off was immediately noticeable.  If Mrs. Browne, in plain despair, went off for a day’s ride with Lord Deppingham, that gentleman’s wife was sick with jealousy.  If Lady Agnes strolled in the moonlit gardens with Mr. Browne, the former Miss Bate of Boston could scarcely control her emotions.  They shed many tears of anguish over the faithlessness of husbands; tears of hatred over the viciousness of temptresses.  Their quarrels were fierce, their upbraidings characteristic, but in the end they cried and kissed and “made up”; they actually found some joy in creating these little feuds and certainly there was great exhilaration in ending them.

They did not know, of course, that the wily Britt, despite his own depression, was all the while accumulating the most astounding lot of evidence to show that a decided streak of insanity existed in the two heirs.  He won Saunders over to his way of thinking, and that faithful agent unconsciously found himself constantly on the watch for “signs,” jotting them down in his memorandum book.  Britt was firm in his purpose to make them out as “mad as March hares” if needs be; he slyly patted his typewritten “manifestations” and said that it would be easy sailing, so far as he was concerned.  One choice bit of evidence he secured in a most canny manner.  He was present when Miss Pelham, at the bank, was “taking” a dictation for the Enemy—­some matter pertaining to the output of the mines.  Lady Deppingham had just been guilty of a most astounding piece of foolhardiness, and he was discussing it with the Enemy.  She had forced her horse to leap across a narrow fissure in the volcano the day before.  Falling, she would have gone to her death three hundred feet below.

“She must be an out and out lunatic,” the Enemy had said.  Britt looked quickly at Miss Pelham and Mr. Bowles.  The former took down the statement in shorthand and Bowles was afterward required to sign “his deposition.”  Such a statement as that, coming from the source it did, would be of inestimable value in Court.

“If they could only be married in some way,” was Britt’s private lament to Saunders, from time to time, when despair overcame confidence.

“I’ve got a ripping idea,” Saunders said one day.

“Let’s have it.  You’ve always got ’em.  Why not divide with me?”

“Can’t do it just yet.  I’ve been looking up a little matter.  I’ll spring it soon.”

“How long have you been working on the idea?”

“Nearly four months,” said Saunders, yawning.

“’Gad, this climate is enervating,” was Britt’s caustic comment.