’Nor was there to-day.  She was perfectly rational.  Think of one’s being driven to hope that she only seemed so!’

‘Did you speak of correspondence?’

’No.  I said that I could not agree to what she asked of me until she had repeated it after a time.  I left her scarcely knowing what I spoke.  What shall I do?  How can I remain in doubt such as this?  I said I wished for your help, yet how can you—­how can anyone—­help me?  Have I unconsciously been the cause of this?’

‘Or has anyone else consciously been so?’ asked the lady, with meaning.

‘What?  You think—?  Is it possible?’

‘You only hinted that your relatives were not altogether pleased.’

Wilfrid, a light of anger flashing from his eyes, walked rapidly the length of the room.

‘She admitted to me,’ he said, in a suppressed voice, ’that her illness began before her father’s death.  It was not that that caused it.  You think that someone may have interfered?  My father?  Impossible!  He is a man of honour; he has written of her in the kindest way.’

But there was someone else.  His father was honourable; could the same be said of Mrs. Rossall?  He remembered his conversation with her on the lake of Thun; it had left an unpleasant impression on his mind—­under the circumstances, explicable enough.  Was his aunt capable of dastardly behaviour?  The word could scarcely be applied to a woman’s conduct, and the fact that it could not made disagreeably evident the latitude conceded to women in consideration of their being compelled to carry on warfare in underhand ways.  Suppose an anonymous letter.  Would not Mrs. Rossall regard that as a perfectly legitimate stratagem, if she had set her mind on resisting this marriage?  Easy, infinitely easy was it to believe this, in comparison with any other explanation of Emily’s behaviour.  In his haste to seize on a credible solution of the difficulty, Wilfrid did not at first reflect that Emily was a very unlikely person to be influenced by such means, still more unlikely that she should keep such a thing secret from him.  It must be remembered, however, that the ways of treachery are manifold, and the idea had only presented it to his mind in the most indefinite form.  As it was, it drove him almost to frenzy.  He could not find a calm word, nor was it indeed possible to communicate to Mrs. Baxendale the suspicion which occupied him.  She, watching him as he stood at a distance, all but forgot her anxious trouble in admiration of the splendid passion which had transformed his features.  Wilfrid looked his best when thus stirred—­his best, from a woman’s point of view.  The pale cast of thought was far from him; you saw the fiery nature asserting itself, and wondered in what direction these energies would at length find scope.  Mrs. Baxendale, not exactly an impressionable woman, had a moment of absent-mindedness.

‘Come here and sit down,’ she said, the motherly insistance of the tone possibly revealing her former thought.