of men speculating upon other men’s possessions is known.  Yet the man who loves a woman has to the full the husband’s jealousy of her good name.  And a lover, that without the claims of the alliance, can be wounded on her behalf, is less distracted in his homage by the personal luminary, to which man’s manufacture of balm and incense is mainly drawn when his love is wounded.  That contemplation of her incomparable beauty, with the multitude of his ideas fluttering round it, did somewhat shake the personal luminary in Redworth.  He was conscious of pangs.  The question bit him:  How far had she been indiscreet or wilful? and the bite of it was a keen acid to his nerves.  A woman doubted by her husband, is always, and even to her champions in the first hours of the noxious rumour, until they had solidified in confidence through service, a creature of the wilds, marked for our ancient running.  Nay, more than a cynical world, these latter will be sensible of it.  The doubt casts her forth, the general yelp drags her down; she runs like the prey of the forest under spotting branches; clear if we can think so, but it has to be thought in devotedness:  her character is abroad.  Redworth bore a strong resemblance to, his fellowmen, except for his power of faith in this woman.  Nevertheless it required the superbness of her beauty and the contrasting charm of her humble posture of kneeling by the fire, to set him on his right track of mind.  He knew and was sure of her.  He dispersed the unhallowed fry in attendance upon any stirring of the reptile part of us, to look at her with the eyes of a friend.  And if . . . !—­a little mouse of a thought scampered out of one of the chambers of his head and darted along the passages, fetching a sweat to his brows.  Well, whatsoever the fact, his heart was hers!  He hoped he could be charitable to women.

She rose from her knees and said:  ‘Now, please, give me the letter.’

He was entreated to excuse her for consigning him to firelight when she left the room.

Danvers brought in a dismal tallow candle, remarking that her mistress had not expected visitors:  her mistress had nothing but tea and bread and butter to offer him.  Danvers uttered no complaint of her sufferings; happy in being the picture of them.  ‘I’m not hungry,’ said he.

A plate of Andrew Hedger’s own would not have tempted him.  The foolish frizzle of bacon sang in his ears as he walked from end to end of the room; an illusion of his fancy pricked by a frost-edged appetite.  But the anticipated contest with Diana checked and numbed the craving.

Was Warwick a man to proceed to extremities on a mad suspicion?—­What kind of proof had he?

Redworth summoned the portrait of Mr. Warwick before him, and beheld a sweeping of close eyes in cloud, a long upper lip in cloud; the rest of him was all cloud.  As usual with these conjurations of a face, the index of the nature conceived by him displayed itself, and no more; but he took it for the whole physiognomy, and pronounced of the husband thus delineated, that those close eyes of the long upper lip would both suspect and proceed madly.