He made no answer, but snatched the frame out of my hand. His restless eyes seemed to fall upon the portrait for a minute, then to rest upon the floor, and after that again upon me! It was plain that his dazed brain was only beginning to find the truth.
"She was my wife," he said very slowly, after a long pause. "Oh, God, help me! I shall never hold her in my arms again."
He saw this, and thrusting the picture into his breast, he turned to leave the house.
"Shall I give my master any message, sir?" I asked.
"Tell him that I came here to strike him dead," said he; and, before I could answer, he had disappeared down the street.
It was the first and last time I ever saw Robert Hadley—for that was his full name; but ten days later he wrote a letter from Charing Cross Hospital to Sir Nicolas, and begged my master to go and see him. And this was the way his story came to us, and with it the story of Lilian More.
She had married him in Birmingham, a year after Sir Nicolas met her there. He was a well-to-do widower then, with one little child—a girl three years old; but six months after his marriage he began to nip with his business acquaintances, and in a year he was a confirmed dipsomaniac. Business, friends, wife, and child—all these became nothing to him. He went down the ladder of self-respect fast, until he had no longer a home, and his wife was
