it was in an evil moment for himself that her husband entered
that room. In a clumsy effort to propitiate his wife's guest, the
unfortunate man laid his hand on the head of the visitor's dog, and with
vicious side-snap the animal bit his hand to the bone.

No consideration had the wife for her husband's sufferings, no trace of
sympathy did she show, as, with an oath, he hurried from the room to
bind up the ugly wound--her whole being was centred in the man before
her. And her very heart stood still when her stunned ears realised that
that man was now saying farewell. Lamentations and entreaties were of no
avail. "There remained nothing else for a man of honour to do," he said.
All these years he had been faithful to her; all these years no other
woman had entered his thoughts. Had she been as true to him as he had
ever been to her, the dearest wish of his heart would have been
fulfilled. Nay, had he come home to find her a widow, even so all might
yet perhaps have been well. But now, when, with his own eyes, he had
seen what, manner of man she had preferred to him, the old love was
killed--killed by her act.

The clatter of his departing horse's feet rang loud in her ears; and
now, great as of old had been her detestation of the man to whom she was
tied, it was but a feeble flame in comparison with the furnace of hate
that began to rage in her heart. Daily and hourly the anguish of the
"might have been" tormented her. Incessantly the words her lover had
spoken seethed in her brain: "If even you had been a widow," he had
said. "A widow?" ... Ever to the same word her thoughts returned--"a
widow." What if he were to die now? If only...! Then she thought of the
bitten hand. Was it not more than likely that the dog was mad when,
unprovoked, it bit a man? And if it _were_ mad ... But assuredly it was
mad! She would ask old Elspeth. Who so wise as Elspeth, who so skilled
as she in the treatment of wounds? And if she could _cure_ wounds, why
... perhaps...! Did not wounds sometimes refuse to heal, and did not
the patient sometimes gradually sink and die without anybody being to
blame?

But no comfort was found in Elspeth--no help. Surely the woman was in
her dotage. Fool! Why did the feckless old idiot not know that the dog
_must_ have been mad? The man was drinking heavily now, goaded by grim
terror of that very thing, and sodden with drink. Body and soul the old
nurse was hers, she believed. Then, what so easy to make as a