your very home, lived one of that woman's spies to report our every word and act?"
"I knew we had an enemy," I say, sitting with stiffly-folded hands, and eyes that never lift themselves from the blank, blinding carpet of my parlour, "but I thought she had no power to harm us."
"And that has undone us," he cries, with a despair and a fury in his voice that makes it sound like nothing human. "If you had only warned me that morning before I left you———" He stops. "God forgive me for blaming you, when my own mad folly has brought us to this. And to think," he cries, smiting his brow with his clenched hand, "that I have lost you to get that vile—thing! After parting with you the day I set out for Rome, I walked some distance; and then, reproaching myself for having allowed you to return home alone, I retraced my steps. Turning the bend of the meadow, I saw you in George Tempest's arms, your head against his shoulder! and, acting under I don't know what impulse, instead of walking boldly forward, I turned sharply, and in another moment was out of sight. I returned to the Towers, just caught my train, and at Marseilles sat down to write to you. My first hot anger had passed by then your parting words of love and sorrow had come back to me with the stamp of their own beautiful truth upon them, and though I could not understand the situation in which I had found you I felt sure you could explain it. And though I did not like it—what man would?—I was not at that time actively jealous of him, or doubtful of you; that was to come after. In my letter I asked you how it was you came to be with him, and whether you had been ill or miserable, when I saw him holding you. I reached Rome safely, and on the day after my arrival I looked for the letter that you had promised to post to me the day after I left Silverbridge; but there was none—no, nor on the next day, or the next. Can you wonder that by degrees there grew up in my heart a terrible fear, a sickening doubt, with my
