‘Can he then be in his sane mind?’

‘In one sense all misconduct is proof of insanity,’ said the doctor.  ’In his case the weakness of the mind has been consequent upon the weakness of the body.’

Three days after that Nora visited Twickenham from Monkhams in obedience to a telegram from her sister.  ‘Louis,’ she said, ’had become so much weaker, that she hardly dared to be alone with him.  Would Nora come to her?’ Nora came of course, and Hugh met her at the station, and brought her with him to the cottage.  He asked whether he might see Trevelyan, but was told that it would be better that he should not.  He had been almost continually silent since the last dispute which he had with his wife; but he had given little signs that he was always thinking of the manner in which he had been brought home by her from Italy, and of the story she had told him of her mode of inducing him to come.  Hugh Stanbury had been her partner in that struggle, and would probably be received, if not with sullen silence, then with some attempt at rebuke.  But Hugh did see Dr. Nevill, and learned from him that it was hardly possible that Trevelyan should live many hours.  ’He has worn himself out,’ said the doctor, ’and there is nothing left in him by which he can lay hold of life again.’  Of Nora her brother-in-law took but little notice, and never again referred in her hearing to the great trouble of his life.  He said to her a word or two about Monkhams, and asked a question now and again as to Lord Peterborough, whom, however, he always called Mr Glascock; but Hugh Stanbury’s name was never mentioned by him.  There was a feeling in his mind that at the very last he had been duped in being brought to England, and that Stanbury had assisted in the deception.  To his wife he would whisper little petulant regrets for the loss of the comforts of Casalunga, and would speak of the air of Italy and of Italian skies and of the Italian sun, as though he had enjoyed at his Sienese villa all the luxuries which climate can give, and would have enjoyed them still had he been allowed to remain there.  To all this she would say nothing.  She knew now that he was failing quickly, and there was only one subject on which she either feared or hoped to hear him speak.  Before he left her for ever and ever would he tell her that he had not doubted her faith?

She had long discussions with Nora on the matter, as though all the future of her life depended on it.  It was in vain that Nora tried to make her understand that if hereafter the spirit of her husband could know anything of the troubles of his mortal life, could ever look back to the things which he had done in the flesh, then would he certainly know the truth, and all suspicion would be at an end.  And if not, if there was to be no such retrospect, what did it matter now, for these few last hours before the coil should be shaken off, and all doubt and all sorrow should be at an end?  But the wife, who was soon to be a widow, yearned to be acquitted in this world by him to whom her guilt or her innocence had been matter of such vital importance.  ’He has never thought it,’ said Nora.