But at last she could bear it no longer.

She touched the priest’s arm as he sat beside her, without looking at him.

The priest returned the touch.

“Is he safe?” she asked, in a tremulous voice, which was scarce audible from grief and anxiety.

“He is,” said the priest.

And then, looking at the man before him, he added immediately, in an unconcerned tone,

“She wants to know what time it is, and I told her two o’clock.  That’s right, isn’t it?”

“About right,” said the man.

Now that was a lie, but whether it was justifiable or not may be left to others to decide.

As for Ethel, an immense load of anxiety was lifted off her mind, and she began to breathe more freely.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE DEMON WIFE.

When Dacres was overpowered by his assailants no mercy was shown him.  His hands were bound tight behind him, and kicks and blows were liberally bestowed during the operation.  Finally, he was pushed and dragged into the house, and up stairs to the room already mentioned.  There he was still further secured by a tight rope around his ankles, after which he was left to his own meditations.

Gloomy and bitter and fierce, indeed, were those meditations.  His body was covered with bruises, and though no bones were broken, yet his pain was great.  In addition to this the cords around his wrists and ankles were very tight, and his veins seemed swollen to bursting.  It was difficult to get an easy position, and he could only lie on his side or on his face.  These bodily pains only intensified the fierceness of his thoughts and made them turn more vindictively than ever upon the subject of his wife.

She was the cause of all this, he thought.  She had sacrificed every thing to her love for her accursed paramour.  For this she had betrayed him, and her friends, and the innocent girl who was her companion.  All the malignant feelings which had filled his soul through the day now swelled within him, till he was well-nigh mad.  Most intolerable of all was his position now—­the baffled enemy.  He had come as the avenger, he had come as the destroyer; but he had been entrapped before he had struck his blow, and here he was now lying, defeated, degraded, and humiliated!  No doubt he would be kept to afford sport to his enemy—­perhaps even his wife might come to gloat over his sufferings, and feast her soul with the sight of his ruin.  Over such thoughts as these he brooded, until at last he had wrought himself into something like frenzy, and with the pain that he felt, and the weariness that followed the fatigues of that day, these thoughts might finally have brought on madness, had they gone on without any thing to disturb them.