“That we will,” was the hearty reply.

Great Heaven! was it a murderess standing there, with that sweet look of compassion on her beautiful face?  Could this woman, who looked pitifully on me, a grown man, drown a little child in the deep sea?  Were those lips, littering kindly words of welcome, the same that had cried in mad despair, “Oh, Heaven! if I dare—­if I dare?” I could have killed myself for the base suspicion.  Yet it was most surely she!

I stooped to pick up the white hawthorn she had dropped.  She took it from me with the sweetest smile, and Lance stood by, looking on with an air of proud proprietorship that would have been amusing if it had not been so unutterably pitiful.

While my brain and mind were still chaos—­a whirl of thought and emotion—­the second dinner-bell rang.  I offered her my arm, but I could not refrain from a shudder as her white hand touched it.  When I saw that hand last it was most assuredly dropping the little burden into the sea.  Lance looked at us most ruefully, so that she laughed and said: 

“Come with us, Lance.”

She laid her other hand on his arm, and we all three walked into the dining-room together.

I could not eat any dinner—­I could only sit and watch the beautiful face.  It was the face of a good woman—­there was nothing cruel, nothing subtle in it.  I must be mistaken.  I felt as though I should go mad.  She was a perfect hostess—­most attentive—­most graceful.  I shall never forget her kindness to me any more than I shall forget the comeliness of her face or the gleam of her golden hair.

She thought I was not well.  She did not know that it was fear which had blanched my face and made me tremble; she could not tell that it was horror which curdled my blood.  Without any fuss—­she was so anxiously considerate for me—­without seeming to make any ceremony, she was so gracefully kind; she would not let me sit in the draughts; with her own hands she selected some purple grapes for me.  This could never be the woman who had drowned a little child.

When dinner was over and we were in the drawing-room again, she drew a chair near the fire for me.

“You will laugh at the notion of a fire in May,” she said; “but I find the early summer evenings chilly, and I cannot bear the cold.”

I wondered if she thought of the chill of the water in which she had plunged the little child.  I looked at her; there was not even a fleeting shadow on her face.  Then she lingered for half a minute by my side.

As she drew near to me, I felt again that it was utterly impossible that my suspicions could be correct, and that I must be mistaken.

“I hope,” she said, “you will not think what I am going to say strange.  I know that it is the custom for some wives to be jealous of their husband’s friends—­some might be jealous of you.  I want to tell you that I am not one of that kind.  I love my husband so utterly, so entirely, that all whom he loves are dear to me.  You are a brother, friend, everything to him—­will you be the same to me?”