king with suffering.
The Pere Anselme thought to himself that he would have done very well
for the model of a martyr of old. It distressed him deeply to see his
pain and to know that there would be more to come.

"Her happiness is all that I care for--surely you know this--but what
has caused this change? Has she seen her husband again?--I----" Here
Henry stopped, a sense of stupefaction set in. What could it all mean?

"We have never spoken upon the matter," the priest answered him. "I
cannot say, but I think--yes, she has certainly come under his
influence again. Have you never searched in your mind, Monsieur, to ask
yourself who this husband could be?"

"No--! How should I have done so? I have never been in America in my
life." And then Henry's haggard eyes caught a look in the old priest's
face. "My God!" he cried, agony in his voice, "you would suggest that it
is some one I may know!"

"I suggest nothing, Monsieur. I make my own deductions from events. Will
you not do the same?"

Henry covered his eyes with his hands. It seemed as though reason were
slipping from him; and then, like a flash of lightning which cleared his
brain, the reality struck him.

"It is Michael Arranstoun," he said with a moan.

"We know nothing for certain," proclaimed the Pere Anselme. "But the
alteration began from this young man's visit. That is why I warned you
to well ascertain the truth of her feelings before going further. I
would have saved you pain."

Henry staggered to the wall of the summer-house and leant there. His
face was ashen-gray in the afternoon's dying light.

"Oh, how hopelessly blind I have been!"

The priest unclasped his tightly-locked hands; his old eyes were full of
pity as he answered:

"We may both have made mistakes. You are more aware of the circumstances
than I am. The Seigneur of Arranstoun is the only man she has seen here
besides yourself. You perhaps know whom she met in England, or Paris?"

"It is Michael Arranstoun," Henry said in a voice strangled and altered
with suffering. "I see every link in the chain--but, O God! why have
they deceived me? What can it mean? What hideous, fiendish cruelty! And
Michael was my old friend."

A wild rage and resentment convulsed him. He only felt that he wished to
kill both these traitors, who had tricked him and destroyed his beliefs
and his happiness. Ghastly thoughts that there might be further
disclosures of more shameful deceptions to come shook him.