“I wonder if Miss Boyd is right,” murmured the doctor. “After all, if you come to think of it, he must have thought that he couldn’t hurt you more. The whole thing is fiendish. He took away from you all your happiness. He must have known that you wanted nothing in the world more than to make Margaret your wife, and he has not only prevented that, but he has married her himself. And he can only have done it by poisoning her mind, by warping her very character. Her soul must be horribly besmirched; he must have entirely changed her personality.”
“Ah, I feel that,” cried Arthur. “If Margaret has broken her word to me, if she’s gone to him so callously, it’s because it’s not the Margaret I know. Some devil must have taken possession of her body.”
“You use a figure of speech. I wonder if it can possibly be a reality.”
Arthur and Dr Porhoët looked at Susie with astonishment.
“I can’t believe that Margaret could have done such a thing,” she went on. “The more I think of it, the more incredible it seems. I’ve known Margaret for years, and she was incapable of deceit. She was very kind-hearted. She was honest and truthful. In the first moment of horror, I was only indignant, but I don’t want to think too badly of her. There is only one way to excuse her, and that is by supposing she acted under some strange compulsion.”
Arthur clenched his hands.
“I’m not sure if that doesn’t make it more awful than before. If he’s married her, not because he cares, but in order to hurt me, what life will she lead with him? We know how heartless he is, how vindictive, how horribly cruel.”
“Dr Porhoët knows more about these things than we do,” said Susie. “Is it possible that Haddo can have cast some spell upon her that would make her unable to resist his will? Is it possible that he can have got such an influence over her that her whole character was changed?”
“How can I tell?” cried the doctor helplessly. “I have heard that such things may happen. I have read of them, but I have no proof. In these matters all is obscurity. The adepts in magic make strange claims. Arthur is a man of science, and he knows what the limits of hypnotism are.”
“We know that Haddo had powers that other men have not,” answered Susie. “Perhaps there was enough truth in his extravagant pretensions to enable him to do something that we can hardly imagine.”