Thurso was silent a moment.
“It has been a plot, then?” he asked, in that dreadful cold tone in which he spoke of his wife.
“Yes, dear; but don’t speak like that,” said Maud. “You speak as if it was a plot against you instead of a plot for you. I didn’t tell you in England, because I was afraid you might refuse to come. That is frank, is it not? I have been responsible for it all.”
Suspicion and hate were awaking in Thurso’s brain. He felt so much better and stronger to-day, and his brain was working again after weeks of torpidity. He told himself he was becoming wonderfully acute and far-sighted.
“I don’t think I quite believe that,” he said. “I believe Catherine had a hand in it. Surely it is clear. She wanted to be left alone with Villars.”
Maud made a gesture of despair.
“Oh, you are mad,” she said. “It isn’t you who speak when you say dreadful false things like that: it’s the demon that possesses you, Thurso—that horrible drug. It has poisoned your body, and it has poisoned your soul.”
Then, with that bewildering rapidity that she knew and dreaded, his mood changed again. But the change, though he was still in the darkness of abysmal despair, was for the better. Anything was better than that vile hate, those incredible suspicions.
“Yes, I am poisoned—I am altogether poisoned,” he said quietly.
Maud turned an imploring face to him.