These awful whispers made him start and stare, and caused the cold sweat to start from all the pores of his body.
Then followed night and dreams. When he awoke after dreams he always thought the dreaming worse than waking. When he sought his bed at night he prayed for dreams as a relief. In the privacy of his own room, and in the still deeper privacy of dreams, he was always in her presence when the rustle of her dress made his pulses thicken with joy.
These dreams were his only resting-places. But, unfortunately, not only did they not last always, but towards the end of each it changed and died in an awful sense of unascertainable disaster. Something had happened to his love, something so hideous and unheard of, that not man or woman, beast or stone, would tell him the secret. With a great shout he awoke, sprang out of bed to seek for his love through all the world, tore open the door, and found his murdered wife lying across the threshold, and upon his hands her blood.
Day by day the influence of these terrors wrought on Grey until his eyes grew dim, his hands palsied, his gait feeble, and his mind dull. He forgot oftener now than formerly. In the midst of business transactions he would stop suddenly, put his hand to his head, mutter a few incoherent words, cease speaking for a while, and then exclaim piteously: "I have forgotten something! I have forgotten something!"
All who came in contact with him saw he was breaking down. They said:
"Poor Grey loved his wife so deeply, so tenderly, he is losing his reason for loss of her."
This popular verdict was not only a great cause of drawing sympathy towards the widower, but almost wholly washed away the stain which had smirched his dead wife's name. For those who had heard of her failing, and believed it fact, now asked themselves:
"How could any man care for a woman so afflicted? How could any man wear away his life in sorrow for the loss of an intemperate wife?"
The evening Grey first visited Sir William Midharst at the "Warfinger Hotel" the young man went to the Castle and had a long talk with Maud, in which she told him of Grey's extraordinary conduct on the occasion of the unknown old woman's visit. She did not tell him she suspected the banker had been trying to make himself more than agreeable to her. He did not say anything to her of the scene between the banker and himself at the "Warfinger." He heard all Maud had to say to him without comment beyond expressions of surprise.
"I know the whole secret," he thought, "but I must have time to think out the situation before I decide on a course of action. When I have considered all the points I shall not be slow to move."