Anguish now distraught Henry’s soul; he stopped in his walk and looked full at the priest, his fine, distinguished face working with suffering.  The Pere Anselme thought to himself that he would have done very well for the model of a martyr of old.  It distressed him deeply to see his pain and to know that there would be more to come.

“Her happiness is all that I care for—­surely you know this—­but what has caused this change?  Has she seen her husband again?—­I——­” Here Henry stopped, a sense of stupefaction set in.  What could it all mean?

“We have never spoken upon the matter,” the priest answered him.  “I cannot say, but I think—­yes, she has certainly come under his influence again.  Have you never searched in your mind, Monsieur, to ask yourself who this husband could be?”

“No—!  How should I have done so?  I have never been in America in my life.”  And then Henry’s haggard eyes caught a look in the old priest’s face.  “My God!” he cried, agony in his voice, “you would suggest that it is some one I may know!”

“I suggest nothing, Monsieur.  I make my own deductions from events.  Will you not do the same?”

Henry covered his eyes with his hands.  It seemed as though reason were slipping from him; and then, like a flash of lightning which cleared his brain, the reality struck him.

“It is Michael Arranstoun,” he said with a moan.

“We know nothing for certain,” proclaimed the Pere Anselme.  “But the alteration began from this young man’s visit.  That is why I warned you to well ascertain the truth of her feelings before going further.  I would have saved you pain.”

Henry staggered to the wall of the summer-house and leant there.  His face was ashen-gray in the afternoon’s dying light.

“Oh, how hopelessly blind I have been!”

The priest unclasped his tightly-locked hands; his old eyes were full of pity as he answered: 

“We may both have made mistakes.  You are more aware of the circumstances than I am.  The Seigneur of Arranstoun is the only man she has seen here besides yourself.  You perhaps know whom she met in England, or Paris?”

“It is Michael Arranstoun,” Henry said in a voice strangled and altered with suffering.  “I see every link in the chain—­but, O God! why have they deceived me?  What can it mean?  What hideous, fiendish cruelty!  And Michael was my old friend.”

A wild rage and resentment convulsed him.  He only felt that he wished to kill both these traitors, who had tricked him and destroyed his beliefs and his happiness.  Ghastly thoughts that there might be further disclosures of more shameful deceptions to come shook him.  He was trembling with passion—­and then the priest said something in his grave, quiet voice which almost stunned him.

“Has it been done in cruelty, my son?  You must examine well the facts before you assert that.  You must not forget that whoever the husband may be, he has consented to divorce her, and she is now going to give herself to you.  Is that cruelty, my son?  Or is it a fine keeping to a given word?  It looks to me more like a noble sacrifice, unless the Seigneur of Arranstoun was aware before he ever came here that Madame Howard was his wife.”