There Colquhoun found her.
"I have told him all," he said. "Your words told him only half, and yet too much. You were never my wife, as you know, and never will be, though the Law may make you take my name. Cruel and heartless woman! to gratify an insensate jealousy you have destroyed your husband."
"Is he—is he—dead?" she cried, almost as if she wished he were.
"No; he is not dead; he is struck with some fit. He cannot speak. Learn, now, that your jealousy was without foundation. Phillis will marry Dunquerque. As for me, I can never marry, as you know."
"He is not dead!" she echoed, taking no notice of the last words. Indeed, Phillis was quite out of her thoughts now. "Does he wish to see me?"
"No; you must not, at present, attempt to see him."
"What will they do to me, Lawrence?" she asked again. "What can they do? I did not mean him to hear. It was all to frighten you."
"To frighten me! What they can do, Mrs. Cassilis, is to put you in the prisoner's box and me in the witness box. What he wants to do, so far as we can yet understand, is to keep silence."
"What is the good of that? He will cry his wrongs all over the town, and Phillis will tell everybody."
"Phillis will tell no one, no one—not even Agatha. It was lucky that Agatha heard nothing; she was upstairs, lying down after her party. Will you keep silence?"