“I can’t find mis’ess nowhere, sir,” she said.  Faber understood at once that she had left him, and a terror, neither vague nor ill-founded, possessed itself of him.  He sprung from his seat, and darted up the stair to her room.  Little more than a glance was necessary to assure him that she had gone deliberately, intending it should be forever.  The diamond ring lay on her dressing-table, spending itself in flashing back the single ray of the sun that seemed to have stolen between the curtains to find it; her wedding ring lay beside it, and the sparkle of the diamonds stung his heart like a demoniacal laughter over it, the more horrible that it was so silent and so lovely:  it was but three days since, in his wife’s presence, he had been justifying suicide with every argument he could bring to bear.  It was true he had insisted on a proper regard to circumstances, and especially on giving due consideration to the question, whether the act would hurt others more than it would relieve the person contemplating it; but, after the way he had treated her, there could be no doubt how Juliet, if she thought of it at all, was compelled to answer it.  He rushed to the stable, saddled Ruber, and galloped wildly away.  At the end of the street he remembered that he had not a single idea to guide him.  She was lying dead somewhere, but whether to turn east or west or north or south to find her, he had not the slightest notion.  His condition was horrible.  For a moment or two he was ready to blow his brains out:  that, if the orthodox were right, was his only chance for over-taking her.  What a laughing-stock he would then be to them all!  The strangest, wildest, maddest thoughts came and went as of themselves, and when at last he found himself seated on Ruber in the middle of the street, an hour seemed to have passed.  It was but a few moments, and the thought that roused him was:  could she have betaken herself to her old lodging at Owlkirk?  It was not likely; it was possible:  he would ride and see.

“They will say I murdered her,” he said to himself as he rode—­so little did he expect ever to see her again.  “I don’t care.  They may prove it if they can, and hang me.  I shall make no defense.  It will be but a fit end to the farce of life.”

He laughed aloud, struck his spurs in Ruber’s flanks, and rode wildly.  He was desperate.  He knew neither what he felt nor what he desired.  If he had found her alive, he would, I do not doubt, have behaved to her cruelly.  His life had fallen in a heap about him; he was ruined, and she had done it, he said, he thought, he believed.  He was not aware how much of his misery was occasioned by a shrinking dread of the judgments of people he despised.  Had he known it, he would have been yet more miserable, for he would have scorned himself for it.  There is so much in us that is beyond our reach!