“Your wife,” reiterated Mrs. Lecount.
At the repetition of those two words the strain on his faculties relaxed. A thought dawned on him for the first time. His eyes fixed on her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily. “Mad!” he said to himself, with a sudden remembrance of what his friend Mr. Bygrave had told him at Aldborough, sharpened by his own sense of the haggard change that he saw in her face.
He spoke in a whisper, but Mrs. Lecount heard him. She was close at his side again in an instant. For the first time, her self-possession failed her, and she caught him angrily by the arm.
“Will you put my madness to the proof, sir?” she asked.
He shook off her hold; he began to gather courage again, in the intense sincerity of his disbelief, courage to face the assertion which she persisted in forcing on him.
“Yes,” he answered. “What must I do?”
“Do what I told you,” said Mrs. Lecount. “Ask the maid that question about her mistress on the spot. And if she tells you the mark is there, do one thing more. Take me up into your wife’s room, and open her wardrobe in my presence with your own hands.”
“What do you want with her wardrobe?” he asked.
“You shall know when you open it.”
“Very strange!” he said to himself, vacantly. “It’s like a scene in a novel—it’s like nothing in real life.” He went slowly into the house, and Mrs. Lecount waited for him in the garden.