ly chattering world; and in every
accusation there was some justice. Was there enough to acquit the other
defendant who stood arraigned? To that she dared not answer "Yes,"
because of the fear which was in her that the strongest amongst all the
various impulses driving him to his defiance was in the end to be found
in his relations to her, in the attitude of his own wife towards him.
Ashwood was full of associations; there was Duty Hill, where he had risen
to his greatest and thereby won her; there was the tree beneath which she
had sat with Marchmont on the evening when the knowledge of her husband's
worst side had been driven like a sharp knife into her very heart. But
more vivid than these memories now was the recollection of that first
evening when she had seen him sitting alone, nobody's friend, and had
determined to be human towards him and to treat him in a human way. There
had been the true beginning of her great experiment. Now she told herself
that she had failed in it, had never been human to him, and had never
treated him in a human way, had not been what a man's wife should be, had
stood always outside, a follower, an admirer, a critic, an accuser, never
simply the woman who was his wife. His fault or hers, or that of both--it
seemed to matter little. The experiment had been hers; and because she
had made it and failed, it seemed to her that he was braving death. Had
she been different, perhaps he would not have rebelled and could have
lived the quiet life with her. It needed little more to make her tell
herself that she drove him to his death, that she was with the enemy,
with the chattering world and with poor deluded old Aunt Maria; she was
of the conspirators; she egged him on to brave his doom.

In darker vein still ran her musings sometimes, when there came over her
that haunting self-distrust; the fear that she was juggling with herself,
shutting her eyes to the sin of her own heart, and, in spite of all her
protestations, was really inspired by a secret hope too black and
treacherous to put in words. However passionately she repudiated it, it
still cried mockingly, "I am here!" It asked if her prayers for her
husband's life were sincere, if her care for him were more than a due
paid to decency, if the doom were in truth a thing she dreaded, and not a
deliverance which convention alone forbade her openly to desire. Plainly,
plainly--did she wish the doom to fall, did she wish him dead, was the
rebelli