"Not the least; because he is very sane, except on this point. Have you asked Mr. Ferris what he thinks of him?"
"Ferris thinks him most able. Says he is the best magistrate in the district. They all down there seem to suppose that he is quite devoted to his wife. They laugh at him as an old bachelor hopelessly in love."
"That letter is the letter of a man in love, is it not?"
Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, I have been extremely careful to keep off the subject with her," he said. "There is one thing, however, which makes me horribly suspicious that you may be right—that he is being actually unkind to her. I mean this. She seems to believe that, when she leaves here, it is final. Now and then, when she is off her guard, she seems to assume that she will never see any of us again. I did what amounted to some pretty open fishing for an invitation to Omberleigh the other day. She was wholly unresponsive."
"She did admit to me, in one letter, that she did very wrong to marry him," slowly said Mrs. Mynors.
"She did?" he cried quickly.
"She practically admitted that her marriage was a failure as far as she was concerned. I will show you that bit of the letter, though most of it is private. I have it here."
Upon his eager assent she produced that letter from Virginia, which Gaunt had intercepted, and read a paragraph to him:
... What I have done is wrong. I know that now. I half knew it all the time. But what else was there for me to do? I believe God knows I did it for the best. I was at the end of my own strength; I was at the end of all our money. I had you all dependent upon me, and I knew I was going to break down.
I felt I had to save you, and, Oh, mother, you can't, you simply must not deny that I have done that!...