country under a perpetual disguise.  If he were caught, the news of his capture would be in all the papers, the news of his trial for murder, the very details of his execution.  The Ambroses would know and the squire, even the country folk, would perhaps at last know the truth about her.  Life even in the quiet spot she had chosen would become intolerable, and she would be obliged to go forth again into a more distant exile.  She bitterly repented having written to her husband in his prison to tell him where she was settled.  It would have been sufficient to acquaint the governor with the fact, so that Goddard might know where she was when his term expired.  She had never written but once, and he had perhaps not been allowed to answer the letter.  His appearance at her door proved that he had received it.  Would to God he had not, she thought.

There were other things besides his crime of forgery which had acted far more powerfully upon Mary Goddard’s mind, and which had broken for ever all ties of affection; circumstances which had appeared during his trial and which had shown that he had not only been unfaithful to those who trusted him, but had been unfaithful to the wife who loved him.  That was what she could not forgive; it was the memory of that which rose like an impassable wall between her and him, worse than his frauds, his forgery, worse almost than his murder.  He had done that which even a loving woman could not pardon, that which was past all forgiveness.  That was why his sudden appearance roused no tender memories, elicited seemingly so little sympathy from her.  She was too good a woman to say it, but she knew in her heart that she wished him dead, the very possibility of ever seeing him again gone from her life for ever, no matter how.

But she must see him again, nevertheless, and to-morrow.  To-morrow, too, she would have to meet the squire, and appear to act and talk as though nothing had happened in this terrible night.  That would be the hardest of all, perhaps; even harder than meeting her husband for a brief moment in order to give him the means of escape.  She felt that in helping him she was participating in his crimes, and yet, she asked herself, what woman would have acted differently?  What woman, even though she might hate her husband with her whole soul, and justly, would yet be so hard-hearted as to refuse him assistance when he was flying for his life?  It would be impossible.  She must help him at any cost; but it was hard to feel that she must see the squire and behave with indifference, while her husband was lurking in the neighbourhood, when a detective might at any moment come to the door, and demand to search the house.