female nature is irresponsible, unaccountable.”  Mr. Vialls had been severe of late in his judgment of women.  “Mrs. Quarrier, poor creature, was the victim of immoderate zeal for worldly ends.  She was abetted by her husband and by Mrs. Wade; they excited her to the point of frenzy, and in the last moment she—­snapped!  Mrs. Wade’s hysterical display is but another illustration of the same thing.  These women have no support outside themselves—­they have deliberately cast away everything of the kind.”

“Let me exhibit my meaning from another point of view.  Consider, Mr. Blenkinsop”——­

Quarrier, in the meantime, was very far from suspecting the accusation which hostile ingenuity had brought against him.  Decency would in any ease have necessitated his withdrawal for the present from public affairs, and, in truth, he was stricken down by his calamity.  The Liversedges had brought him to their house; he transacted no business, and saw no one beyond the family circle.  At the funeral people had thought him strangely unmoved; pride forbade him to make an exhibition of grief, but in secret he suffered as only a strong man can.  His love for Lilian was the deepest his life would know.  Till now, he had not understood how unspeakably precious she was to him; for the most part he had treated her with playful good-humour, seldom, if ever, striking the note of passion in his speech.  With this defect he reproached himself.  Lilian had not learnt to trust him sufficiently; she feared the result upon him of such a blow as Northway had it in his power to inflict.  It was thus he interpreted her suicide, for Mrs. Wade had told him that Lilian believed disaster to be imminent.  Surely he was to blame for it that, at such a pass, she had fled away from him instead of hastening to his side.  How perfectly had their characters harmonized!  He could recall no moment of mutual dissatisfaction, and that in spite of conditions which, with most women, would have made life very difficult.  He revered her purity; her intellect he esteemed far subtler and nobler than his own.  With such a woman for companion, he might have done great things; robbed for ever of her beloved presence, he felt lame, purposeless, indifferent to all but the irrecoverable past.

In a day or two he was to leave Polterham.  Whether Northway would be satisfied with the result of his machinations remained to be seen; as yet nothing more had been heard of him.  The fellow was perhaps capable of demanding more hush-money, of threatening the memory of the woman he had killed.  Quarrier hoped more earnestly than ever that the secret would not he betrayed; he scorned vulgar opinion, so far as it affected himself, but could not bear the thought of Lilian’s grave being defiled by curiosity and reprobation.  The public proceedings had brought to light nothing whatever that seemed in conflict with medical evidence and the finding of the coroner’s jury.  One dangerous witness had necessarily come