So now Coventry put that word “convent” and this word “nun” together, and came to Hillsborough full of suspicions.

He took lodgings nearly opposite Little’s house, and watched in a dark room so persistently, that, at last, he saw the nun appear, saw her stealthy, cat-like approaches, her affected retreat, her cunning advance, her long lingering look.

A close observer of women, he saw in every movement of her supple body that she was animated by love.

He raged and sickened with jealousy, and when, at last, she retired, he followed her, with hell in his heart, and never lost sight of her till she entered her house in the valley.

If there had been a house to let in the terrace, he would certainly have taken it; but Little had anticipated him.

He took a very humble lodging in the neighborhood; and by dint of watching, he at last saw the nun speaking to a poor woman with her veil up.  It revealed to him nothing but what he knew already.  It was the woman he loved, and she hated him; the woman who had married him under a delusion, and stabbed him on his bridal day.  He loved her all the more passionately for that.

Until he received Lally’s note, he had been content to wait patiently until his rival should lose hope, and carry himself and his affections elsewhere; he felt sure that must be the end of it.

But now jealousy stung him, wild passion became too strong for reason, and he resolved to play a bold and lawless game to possess his lawful wife.  Should it fail, what could they do to him?  A man may take his own by force.  Not only his passions, but the circumstances tempted him.  She was actually living alone, in a thinly-peopled district, and close to a road.  It was only to cover her head and stifle her cries, and fly with her to some place beforehand prepared, where she would be brought to submission by kindness of manner combined with firmness of purpose.

Coventry possessed every qualification to carry out such a scheme as this.  He was not very courageous; yet he was not a coward:  and no great courage was required.  Cunning, forethought, and unscrupulousness were the principal things, and these he had to perfection.

He provided a place to keep her; it was a shooting-box of his own, on a heathery hill, that nobody visited except for shooting, and the season for shooting was past.

He armed himself with false certificates of lunacy, to show on an emergency, and also a copy of his marriage certificate:  he knew how unwilling strangers are to interfere between man and wife.

The only great difficulty was to get resolute men to help him in this act.

He sounded Cole; but that worthy objected to it, as being out of his line.

Coventry talked him over, and offered a sum that made him tremble with cupidity.  He assented on one condition—­that he should not be expected to break into the house, nor do any act that should be “construed burglarious.”  He actually used that phrase, which I should hardly have expected from him.