’But if he would say so!  If he would only look it!  It will be all in all to me as long as I live in this world.’  And then, though they had determined between themselves in spoken words never to regard him again as one who had been mad, in all their thoughts and actions towards him they treated him as though he were less responsible than an infant.  And he was mad mad though every doctor in England had called him sane.  Had he not been mad he must have been a fiend or he could not have tortured, as he had done, the woman to whom he owed the closest protection which one human being can give to another.

During these last days and nights she never left him.  She had done her duty to him well, at any rate since the time when she had been enabled to come near him in Italy.  It may be that in the first days of their quarrel, she had not been regardful, as she should have been, of a husband’s will, that she might have escaped this tragedy by submitting herself to the man’s wishes, as she had always been ready to submit herself to his words.  Had she been able always to keep her neck in the dust under his foot, their married life might have been passed without outward calamity, and it is possible that he might still have lived.  But if she erred, surely she had been scourged for her error with scorpions.  As she sat at his bedside watching him, she thought of her wasted youth, of her faded beauty, of her shattered happiness, of her fallen hopes.  She had still her child, but she felt towards him that she herself was so sad a creature, so sombre, so dark, so necessarily wretched from this time forth till the day of her death, that it would be better for the boy that she should never be with him.  There could be nothing left for her but garments dark with woe, eyes red with weeping, hours sad from solitude, thoughts weary with memory.  And even yet, if he would only now say that he did not believe her to have been guilty, how great would be the change in her future life!

Then came an evening in which he seemed to be somewhat stronger than he had been.  He had taken some refreshment that had been prepared for him, and, stimulated by its strength, had spoken a word or two both to Nora and to his wife.  His words had been of no especial interest alluding to some small detail of his own condition, such as are generally the chosen topics of conversation with invalids.  But he had been pronounced to be better, and Nora spoke to him cheerfully, when he was taken into the next room by the man who was always at hand to move him.  His wife followed him, and soon afterwards returned, and bade Nora good night.  She would sit by her husband, and Nora was to go to the room below, that she might receive her lover there.  He was expected out that evening, but Mrs Trevelyan said that she would not see him.  Hugh came and went, and Nora took herself to her chamber.  The hours of the night went on, and Mrs Trevelyan was still sitting by her husband’s bed.  It was still September, and the weather was very warm.  But the windows had been all closed since an hour before sunset.  She was sitting there thinking, thinking, thinking.  Dr. Nevill had told her that the time now was very near.  She was not thinking now how very near it might be, but whether there might yet be time for him to say that one word to her.