, might make such blunders as
these, and yet be true. She believed that such statements might be
blunders and not falsehoods,--so convinced was she that her husband's
mind would not act at all times as do the minds of other men. But
having such a conviction she was driven to believe also that almost
anything might be possible. Soames may have been right, or he might
have dropped, not the book, but the cheque. She had no difficulty in
presuming Soames to be wrong in any detail, if by so supposing she
could make the exculpation of her husband easier to herself. If
villainy on the part of Soames was needful to her theory, Soames
would become to her a villain at once,--of the blackest dye. Might it
not be possible that the cheque having thus fallen into her husband's
hands, he had come, after a while, to think that it had been sent to
him by his friend, the dean? And if it were so, would it be possible
to make others so believe? That there was some mistake which would be
easily explained were her husband's mind lucid at all points, but
which she could not explain because of the darkness of his mind, she
was thoroughly convinced. But were she herself to put forward such
a defence on her husband's part, she would in doing so be driven to
say that he was a lunatic,--that he was incapable of managing the
affairs of himself or his family. It seemed to her that she would be
compelled to have him proved to be either a thief or a madman. And
yet she knew that he was neither. That he was not a thief was as
clear to her as the sun at noonday. Could she have lain on this man's
bosom for twenty years, and not yet have learned the secrets of the
heart beneath? The whole mind of the man was, as she told herself,
within her grasp. He might have taken the twenty pounds; he might
have taken it and spent it, though it was not his own; but yet he
was no thief. Nor was he a madman. No man more sane in preaching
the gospel of his Lord, in making intelligible to the ignorant the
promises of his Saviour, ever got into a parish pulpit, or taught in
a parish school. The intellect of the man was as clear as running
water in all things not appertaining to his daily life and its
difficulties. He could be logical with a vengeance,--so logical as to
cause infinite trouble to his wife, who, with all her good sense, was
not logical. And he had Greek at his fingers' ends,--as his daughter
knew very well. And even to this day he would sometimes recite to
th