ot
the less passionately that she had returned at a time so terrible. What
was he to say to her? How was he to tell her? While he showered kisses
on her he was asking himself these questions. When she found out--when
he should confess to her the whole truth--she would leave him again.
Yet he did not understand the nature of the woman who loves. He held
her in his arms; his kisses pleaded for him; they mastered her--she was
ready to believe, to accept, to surrender even her truth and honesty;
and she was ready, though she knew it not, to become the accomplice of
a crime. Rather than leave her husband again, she would do everything.

Yet, Lord Harry felt there was one reservation: he might confess
everything, except the murder of the Dane. No word of confession had
passed the doctor's lips, yet he knew too well that the man had been
murdered; and, so far as the man had been chosen for his resemblance to
himself, that was perfectly useless, because the resemblance, though
striking at the first, had been gradually disappearing as the man Oxbye
grew better; and was now, as we have seen, wholly lost after death.

"I have a great deal--a great deal--to tell you, dear," said the
husband, holding both her hands tenderly. "You will have to be very
patient with me. You must make up your mind to be shocked at first,
though I shall be able to convince you that there was really nothing
else to be done--nothing else at all."

"Oh! go on, Harry. Tell me all. Hide nothing."

"I will tell you all," he replied.

"First, where is that poor man whom the doctor brought here and Fanny
nursed? And where is Fanny?"

"The poor man," he replied carelessly, "made so rapid a recovery that
he has got on his legs and gone away--I believe, to report himself to
the hospital whence he came. It is a great triumph for the doctor,
whose new treatment is now proved to be successful. He will make a
grand flourish of trumpets about it. I dare say, if all he claims for
it is true, he has taken a great step in the treatment of lung
diseases."

Iris had no disease of the lungs, and consequently cared very little
for the scientific aspect of the question.

"Where is my maid, then?"

"Fanny? She went away--let me see: to-day is Friday--on Wednesday
morning. It was no use keeping her here. The man was well, and she was
anxious to get back to you. So she started on Wednesday morning,
proposing to take the night boat from Dieppe. She must have stopped
som