such a person as Mr. Vimpany. She was asked to believe that
an invalid from a foreign hospital, who was a perfect stranger to Lord
Harry, had been willingly made welcome to a bedroom at the cottage. She
was asked to believe that this astounding concession had been offered
to the doctor as a tribute of friendship, after her husband had himself
told her that he regretted having invited Vimpany, for the second time,
to become his guest. Here was one improbable circumstance accumulated
on another, and a clever woman was expected to accept the monstrous
excuses, thus produced, as a trustworthy statement of facts.
Irresistibly, the dread of some evil deed in secret contemplation cast
its darkening presence on the wife's mind. Lord Harry's observation had
not misled him, when he saw Iris turn pale, and when the doubt was
forced on him whether he might not have frightened her.

"If my explanation of this little matter has satisfied you," he
ventured to resume, "we need say no more about it."

"I agree with you," she answered, "let us say no more about it."
Conscious, in spite of the effort to resist it, of a feeling of
oppression while she was in the same room with a man who had
deliberately lied to her, and that man her husband, she reminded Lord
Harry that he had proposed to take a walk in the garden. Out in the
pure air, under the bright sky, she might breathe more freely. "Come to
the flowers," she said.

They went to the garden together--the wife fearing the deceitful
husband, the husband fearing the quick-witted wife.

Watching each other like two strangers, they walked silently side by
side, and looked now and then at the collection of flowers and plants.
Iris noticed a delicate fern which had fallen away from the support to
which it had been attached. She stopped, and occupied herself in
restoring it to its place. When she looked round again, after attending
to the plant, her husband had disappeared, and Mr. Vimpany was waiting
in his place.

CHAPTER XLIV

FICTION: IMPROVED BY THE DOCTOR

"WHERE is Lord Harry?" Iris asked.

The reply startled her: "Lord Harry leaves me to say to your ladyship,
what he has not had resolution enough to say for himself."

"I don't understand you, Mr. Vimpany."

The doctor pointed to the fern which had just been the object of Lady
Harry's care.

"You have been helping that sickly plant there to live and thrive," he
said, "and I have felt some curiosity in watching you. The