pardon, ma'am; the claret the two gentlemen drank is not
charged for in the bill."

"What do you mean?"

The waiter explained that Mr. Mountjoy had purchased the whole stock of
the wine. Suspicion, as well as surprise, appeared in Mrs. Vimpany's
face. She had hitherto thought it likely that Miss Henley's
gentleman-like friend might be secretly in love with the young lady.
Her doubts of him, now, took a wider range of distrust. She went on up
the stairs by herself, and banged the door of the private room as the
easiest means of waking the sleeping man. To the utmost noise that she
could make in this way, he was perfectly impenetrable. For a while she
waited, looking at him across the table with unutterable contempt.

There was the man to whom the religion of the land and the law of the
land, acting together in perfect harmony, had fettered her for life!
Some women, in her position, might have wasted time in useless
self-reproach. Mrs. Vimpany reviewed her miserable married life with
the finest mockery of her own misfortune. "Virtue," she said to
herself, "is its own reward."

Glancing with careless curiosity at the disorder of the dinner-table,
she noticed some wine still left in the bottom of her husband's glass.
Had artificial means been used to reduce him to his present condition?
She tasted the claret. No; there was nothing in the flavour of it which
betrayed that he had been drugged. If the waiter was to be believed, he
had only drunk claret--and there he was, in a state of helpless
stupefaction, nevertheless.

She looked again at the dinner-table, and discovered one, among the
many empty bottles, with some wine still left in it. After a moment of
reflection, she took a clean tumbler from the sideboard.

Here was the wine which had been an object of derision to Mr. Vimpany
and his friends. They were gross feeders and drinkers; and it might not
be amiss to put their opinions to the test. She was not searching for
the taste of a drug now; her present experiment proposed to try the
wine on its own merits.

At the time of her triumphs on the country stage--before the date of
her unlucky marriage--rich admirers had entertained the handsome
actress at suppers, which offered every luxury that the most perfect
table could supply. Experience had made her acquainted with the flavour
of the finest claret--and that experience was renewed by the claret
which she was now tasting. It was easy to understand why Mr. Mountjoy