In her own room Miss Silver secured the door upon the inside, according to custom, donned her night-dress, and went to bed—­to watch and wait.

* * * * *

The mess dinner was a very tedious affair to one guest at least.  Major Morrell and the officers told good stories and sung doubtful songs, and passed the wine and grew hilarious; but Sir Everard Kingsland chafed horribly under it all, and longed for the hour of his release.

A dull, aching torture lay at his heart; a chill presentiment of evil had been with him all day; the tortures of love and rage and jealousy had lashed him nearly into madness.

Sometimes love carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them.  Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at Parmalee, at all the world.

He was haggard and worn and wild, and his friends stared at him and shrugged their shoulders, and smiled significantly at this outward evidence of post-nuptial bliss.

It was almost midnight when the young baronet mounted Sir Galahad and rode home.  Kingsland Court lay dark and still under the frowning night sky.  He glanced up at the window of his wife’s chamber.  A light burned there.  A longing, wistful look filled his blue eyes, his arms stretched out involuntarily, his heart gave a great plunge, as though it would break away and fly to its idol.

“My darling!” he murmured, passionately—­“my darling, my life, my love, my wife!  Oh, my God to think, I should love her, wildly, madly still, believing her—­knowing her to be false!”

He went up to his dressing-room, his heart full to bursting.  A mad, insane longing to go to her, to fold her to his breast, to forgive her all, to take her, guilty or innocent, and let pride and honor go to the winds, was upon him.  He loved her so intensely, so passionately, that life without her, apart from her, was hourly increasing torture.

The sight of a folded note lying on the table alone arrested his excited steps.  He took it up, looked at the strange superscription, tore it open, ran over its diabolical contents, and reeled as if struck a blow.

“Great Heaven! it is not true! it can not be true! it is a vile, accursed slander!  My wife meet this man alone, and at midnight, in that forsaken spot!  Oh, it is impossible!  May curses light upon the slanderous coward who dared to write this infernal lie!”

He flung it, in a paroxysm of mad fury, into the fire.  A flash of flame, and Sybilla Silver’s artfully written note was forever gone.  He started up in white fury.

“I will go to her room; I will see for myself!  I will find her safely asleep, I know!”

But a horrible misgiving filled him, even while he uttered the brave words.  He dashed out of his room and into his wife’s.  It was deserted.  He entered the bedroom.  She was not there; the bed had not been slept in.  He passed to her boudoir; that, too, was vacant.