to Hubert Eldon!  She recalled his voice when the other day he spoke of Hubert.  He had not since recurred to the subject, but his manner still bore the significance with which that conversation had invested it.  No dream of suspicions on his part had come to her, but it was enough that something had happened to intensify his dislike of Hubert.  Of her many fears, here was one which couched dark and shapeless in the background.

A feeble woman would have chosen anyone—­her mother, her brother—­rather than Mutimer himself for the first participant in such a discovery.  Adela was not feeble, and the very danger, though it might chill her senses, nerved her soul.  Was she not making him too ignoble?  Was she not herself responsible for much of the strangeness in his behaviour of late?  The question she had once asked herself, whether he loved her, she could not answer doubtfully; was it not his love that had set her icily against him?  If she could not render him love in return, that was the wrong she did him, the sin she had committed in becoming his wife.  Adela by this time knew too well that, in her threefold vows, love had of right the foremost place; honour and obedience could not exist without love.  Her wrong was involuntary, none the less she owed him such reparation as was possible; she must keep her mind open to his better qualities.  A man might fall, yet not be irredeemably base.  Oh, that she had never known of that poor girl in London!  Base, doubly and trebly base, had been his behaviour there, for one ill deed had drawn others after it.  But his repentance, his humiliation, must have been deep, and of the kind which strengthens against ill-doing in the future.

It had to be done, and had better be done quickly.  Adela went to her boudoir and rang the bell.  The servant who came told her that Mutimer was in the house.  She summoned him.

It was five minutes before he appeared.  He was preoccupied, though not gloomily so.

‘I thought you were at church,’ he said, regarding her absently.

‘I came away—­because I found something—­this!’

She had hoped to speak with calmness, but the interval of waiting had agitated her, and the fear which no effort could allay struck her heart as he entered.  She held the parchment to him.

‘What is it?’ he asked, his attention gradually awakened by surprise.  He did not move forward to meet her extended hand.

’You will see—­it is the will that we thought was destroyed—­old Mr. Mutimer’s will.’

She rose and brought it to him.  He looked at her with a sceptical smile, which was involuntary, and lingered on his face even after he had begun to read the document.

Adela seated herself again; she had scarcely power to stand.  There was a long silence.

‘Where did you find this?’ Mutimer inquired at length.  His tone astonished her; it was almost indifferent.  But he did not raise his eyes.