“So much for the case,” resumed the lawyer.  “Now for what I have done on receiving your instructions.  I have examined the witnesses; and I have had an interview (not a very pleasant one) with Mr. Moy.  The result of those two proceedings is briefly this.  First discovery:  In assuming the character of the lady’s husband Mr. Brinkworth was acting under your directions—­which tells dead against you. Second discovery:  Not the slightest impropriety of conduct, not an approach even to harmless familiarity, was detected by either of the witnesses, while the lady and gentleman were together at the inn.  There is literally no evidence to produce against them, except that they were together—­in two rooms.  How are you to assume a guilty purpose, when you can’t prove an approach to a guilty act?  You can no more take such a case as that into Court than you can jump over the roof of this cottage.”

He looked hard at his client, expecting to receive a violent reply.  His client agreeably disappointed him.  A very strange impression appeared to have been produced on this reckless and headstrong man.  He got up quietly; he spoke with perfect outward composure of face and manner when he said his next words.

“Have you given up the case?”

“As things are at present, Mr. Delamayn, there is no case.”

“And no hope of my getting divorced from her?”

“Wait a moment.  Have your wife and Mr. Brinkworth met nowhere since they were together at the Scotch inn?”

“Nowhere.”

“As to the future, of course I can’t say.  As to the past, there is no hope of your getting divorced from her.”

“Thank you.  Good-night.”

“Good-night, Mr. Delamayn.”

Fastened to her for life—­and the law powerless to cut the knot.

He pondered over that result until he had thoroughly realized it and fixed it in his mind.  Then he took out Mrs. Glenarm’s letter, and read it through again, attentively, from beginning to end.

Nothing could shake her devotion to him.  Nothing would induce her to marry another man.  There she was—­in her own words—­dedicated to him:  waiting, with her fortune at her own disposal, to be his wife.  There also was his father, waiting (so far as he knew, in the absence of any tidings from Holchester House) to welcome Mrs. Glenarm as a daughter-in-law, and to give Mrs. Glenarm’s husband an income of his own.  As fair a prospect, on all sides, as man could desire.  And nothing in the way of it but the woman who had caught him in her trap—­the woman up stairs who had fastened herself on him for life.

He went out in the garden in the darkness of the night.

There was open communication, on all sides, between the back garden and the front.  He walked round and round the cottage—­now appearing in a stream of light from a window; now disappearing again in the darkness.  The wind blew refreshingly over his bare head.  For some minutes he went round and round, faster and faster, without a pause.  When he stopped at last, it was in front of the cottage.  He lifted his head slowly, and looked up at the dim light in the window of Anne’s room.