"Did you—did she——"
Then she broke down, and sobbed a little with her face against her husband's breast. Caspar's breath grew shorter—a sign of excitement with him—but for a time he waited quietly and would not speak. He could not all at once make up his mind what to say.
"Alice," he said at last, "if you ask me questions I suppose I must answer them in one way or another. But—I think I had rather you did not." He felt that every nerve was strained in self-control as she listened to him. "Mrs. Romaine," he went on deliberately, "is not a woman that I like—or—respect. I would very much prefer not to talk about her."
"I must tell you just one thing," she whispered, "it was my feeling about her—my jealousy of her—that made me leave you—twelve years ago."
She had surprised him now. "Alice! Impossible," he said. "Why, my poor girl, there was not the slightest reason. I can most solemnly swear to you, Alice, that I never had any other feeling for Mrs. Romaine than that of ordinary friendship. My dear, will you never believe that you have always been the one woman in all the world for me?"
"Forgive me, Caspar," she murmured, "I do believe it now."
At the same hour, a haggard and despairing woman raised herself from the floor where she had lain for many weary hours, trying by passionate tears and cries and outbursts of unavailing lamentation to exhaust or stifle the anguish which seemed to have reached its most intolerable point. Her robes were soiled and crushed, her hair was dishevelled, her eyes were red with weeping; and, as she rose, she wrung her hands together and then raised them in appeal to the God whom she had so long forgotten and forsaken.
"Oh, my God," she cried, "how can I bear it? All that I do is useless. I may lie and cheat and plot as much as I like, but all my schemes are in vain. I cannot hurt her, as she said: I cannot punish him: I have no power left. No power, no beauty, no will! Am I losing my senses, too, like Francis?" She shuddered at the thought. "Perhaps I am going mad—they have driven me mad, Caspar Brooke and his wife, between them—mad, mad, mad!—Oh, God," she said, with a long shivering sigh, "Oh, God, avert that doom! Not that punishment of all others, for mercy's sake!"
She looked up and down her dimly lighted room with an expression upon her face of horror and unrest, which bore some resemblance to the look of one whose intellect was becoming unhinged. It seemed as if she were afraid that something might leap out upon her from the darkness, or as if goblin voices might at any moment mutter in her ear. For a long time she stood motionless in the middle of the room, her eyes staring, her hands hanging at her sides. Then she moved slowly to a writing-table, took a sheet of paper and a pen, and wrote a few lines. When she had finished she enclosed the sheet in an envelope, and addressed it to Lady Alice Brooke. And when that was done she rang the bell and sent the letter to the post. Then she nodded and smiled strangely to herself.