going; I will call in again
to-night."

Mr. Fraser accompanied him down to the gate, where he had left his
trap. Before they got out of the front door, Angela had roused herself
again, and they could hear her beginning to quote Homer, and then
breaking out into snatches of her sailor-songs.

"'High aloft amongst the rigging
Sings the loud exulting gale.'

"That's like me. I sing too," and then followed peal upon peal of mad
laughter.

"A very sad case! She has a poor chance, I fear."

Mr. Fraser was too much affected to answer him.

CHAPTER LXVII

Public feeling in Marlshire was much excited about the Caresfoot
tragedy, and, when it became known that Lady Bellamy had attempted to
commit suicide, the excitement was trebled. It is not often that the
dullest and most highly respectable part of an eminently dull and
respectable county gets such a chance of cheerful and interesting
conversation as these two events gave rise to. We may be sure that the
godsend was duly appreciated; indeed, the whole story is up to this
hour a favourite subject of conversation in those parts.

Of course the members of the polite society of the neighbourhood of
Roxham were divided into two camps. The men all thought that Angela
had been shamefully treated, the elder and most intensely respectable
ladies for the most part inclined to the other side of the question.
It not being their habit to look at matters from the same point of
view in which they present themselves to a man's nicer sense of
honour, they could see no great harm in George Caresfoot's stratagems.
A man so rich, they argued, was perfectly entitled to buy his wife.
The marriage had been arranged, like their own, on the soundest
property basis, and the woman who rose in rebellion against a husband
merely because she loved another man, or some such romantic nonsense,
deserved all she got. Gone mad, had she?--well, it was a warning! And
these aristocratic matrons sniffed and turned up their noses. They
felt that Angela, by going mad and creating a public excitement, had
entered a mute protest against the recognized rules of marriage sale-
and-barter as practised in this country--and Zululand. Having
daughters to dispose of, they resented this, and poor Angela was for
years afterwards spoken of among them as that "immoral girl."

But the lower and more human strata of society did not sympathize with
this