"Julian, how can you be so cruel?"
She was by his side again, with her hand in his, forgetful of all things except her love for him, her pity for his pain. All her natural horror at his guilt was not strong enough to extinguish her love, or to lessen her compassion. As she had pitied him for his physical infirmity, so she now pitied him for his mental infirmity—a mind swayed to crime by undisciplined passions.
Heathcote left the room without another word. He had come there as the messenger of Fate. He had no further business in that house.
He had heard from the butler that Sir William Spencer and the local physician had been in consultation together that afternoon, and that the man had gathered from their talk as they left the house that Mr. Wyllard's illness was likely to end fatally, sooner than Sir William had at first supposed.
"Give me my sleeping draught, and then go, Dora," said Wyllard, when he and his wife were alone.
She prepared to obey him. The nurse was taking her rest at this hour, and it was the wife's privilege to attend upon her husband. The morphia sleeping draughts had been administered with rigid care, Dora herself watching the allotment of every bottle, lest the unhappy sufferer should be tempted to take an overdose and end the tragedy of pain. Once, when she had betrayed her anxiety by a word spoken unawares, she had seen a curious smile upon her husband's pale lips, a smile that told her he had read her thoughts; and now she felt the peril of suicide was a much nearer dread. What had he to live for now—he who stood confessed a murderer, before the wife who had revered him?
The sleeping draughts had been sent in from the local doctor, half a dozen at a time, the patient taking two and sometimes three in the course of the day and night. Dora kept them under lock and key in the cabinet, where she kept her drawing materials, an old tulip-wood cabinet of Dutch inlaid work that stood in a corner of the room, at some distance from the sick man's sofa.
On the table by his side stood his dressing-case, with its glittering array of silver-gilt-topped bottles—eau de cologne, toilet vinegar, sal volatile. His medicine glass was on the same table.
And now, while Dora stood with her face towards the cabinet, Wyllard's crippled hands were busied with one of those bottles in the dressing-case. With a wonderful swiftness and dexterity, taking into account the condition of his hands, he drew out one of the smallest bottles in the case, and unscrewed the stopper. The bottle contained about half an ounce of a clear white liquid.
Wyllard poured this liquid into a glass, which he held ready for Dora when she brought him the sleeping draught. The
