peechless agony held me I never knew. In a longer or shorter time
there stole over me slowly a sleepy sense of relief. I heard my own
labored breathing. I felt my hands moving feebly and mechanically, like
the hands of a baby. I faintly opened my eyes and looked round me--as if
I had passed through the ordeal of death, and had awakened to new senses
in a new world.

The first person I saw was a man--a stranger. He moved quietly out of my
sight; beckoning, as he disappeared, to some other person in the room.

Slowly and unwillingly the other person advanced to the sofa on which I
lay. A faint cry of joy escaped me; I tried to hold out my feeble hands.
The other person who was approaching me was my husband!

I looked at him eagerly. He never looked at me in return. With his eyes
on the ground, with a strange appearance of confusion and distress in
his face, he too moved away out of my sight. The unknown man whom I had
first noticed followed him out of the room. I called after him faintly,
"Eustace!" He never answered; he never returned. With an effort I moved
my head on the pillow, so as to look round on the other side of the
sofa. Another familiar face appeared before me as if in a dream. My good
old Benjamin was sitting watching me, with the tears in his eyes.

He rose and took my hand silently, in his simple, kindly way.

"Where is Eustace?" I asked. "Why has he gone away and left me?"

I was still miserably weak. My eyes wandered mechanically round the room
as I put the question. I saw Major Fitz-David, I saw the table on which
the singing girl had opened the book to show it to me. I saw the girl
herself, sitting alone in a corner, with her handkerchief to her eyes
as if she were crying. In one mysterious moment my memory recovered its
powers. The recollection of that fatal title-page came back to me in all
its horror. The one feeling that it roused in me now was a longing to
see my husband--to throw myself into his arms, and tell him how firmly I
believed in his innocence, how truly and dearly I loved him. I seized on
Benjamin with feeble, trembling hands. "Bring him back to me!" I cried,
wildly. "Where is he? Help me to get up!"

A strange voice answered, firmly and kindly: "Compose yourself, madam.
Mr. Woodville is waiting until you have recovered, in a room close by."

I looked at him, and recognized the stranger who had followed my husband
out of the room. Why had he returned alone? Why was Eustace not with