"Then take care," I answered, "that in protecting my father's health you do not destroy it altogether."

In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my meaning, for after a moment of silence she said:

"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in the future, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I shall not consider that I am in any way responsible for it."

At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from various parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some of them advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list of steamers' sailings.

Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torture can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myself if I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned.

But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, saying she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards the end, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look of triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand.

"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game in your own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing."

The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized the arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law (not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessed that both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeper under the inspiration of her mistress.

Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcoming entertainment.

Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of my maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawer Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leaving London by the early train the following morning and would arrive at Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.

"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him!

But of course you've told him already, haven't you? ... No? Ah, I see, you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happy you!"

It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There was no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me in the net of my sin, so that I could not fly away.

At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed for the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband at Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwards I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to me directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When, after a while, I asked what had become of him, I was told that he was in the library with Alma, and that they were alone.

Two hours passed.

To justify and fortify myself I thought how badly my husband had behaved to me. I remembered that he had married me from the most mercenary motives; that he had paid off his mistress with the money that came through me; that he had killed by cruelty the efforts I had made to love him; that he had humiliated me by gross infidelities committed on my honeymoon. I recalled the scenes in Rome, the scenes in Paris, and the insults I had received under my own roof.

It was all in vain. Whether God means it that the woman's fault in breaking her marriage vows (whatever her sufferings and excuse) shall be greater than that of the man I do not know. I only know that I was trembling like a prisoner before her judge when, being dressed for dinner and waiting for the sound of the bell, I heard my husband's footsteps approach my door.

I was standing by the fire at that moment, and I held on to the mantelpiece as my husband came into the room.

SEVENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER

He was very pale. The look of hardness, almost of brutality, which pierced his manner at normal moments had deepened, and I could see at a glance that he was nervous. His monocle dropped of itself from his slow grey eyes, and the white fat fingers which replaced it trembled.

Without shaking hands or offering any other sort of salutation he plunged immediately into the matter that was uppermost in his mind.

"I am still at a loss to account for this affair of your father's," he said. "Of course I know what it is supposed to be--a reception in honour of our home-coming. That explanation may or may not be sufficient for these stupid islanders, but it's rather too thin for me. Can you tell me what your father means by it?"

I knew he knew what my father meant, so I said, trembling like a sheep that walks up to a barking dog:

"Hadn't you better ask that question of my father himself?"

"Perhaps I should if he were here, but he isn't, so I ask you. Your father is a strange man. There's no knowing what crude things he will not do to gratify his primitive instincts. But he does not spend five or ten thousand pounds for nothing. He isn't a fool exactly."

"Thank you," I said. I could not help it. It was forced out of me.

My husband flinched and looked at me. Then the bully in him, which always lay underneath, came uppermost.

"Look here, Mary," he said. "I came for an explanation and I intend to have one. Your father may give this affair what gloss he pleases, but you must know as well as I do what rumour and report are saying, so we might as well speak plainly. Is it the fact that the doctor has made certain statements about your own condition, and that your father is giving this entertainment because ... well, because he is expecting an heir?"

To my husband's astonishment I answered:

"Yes."

"So you admit it? Then perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me how that condition came about?"

Knowing he needed no explanation, I made no answer.

"Can't you speak?" he said.

But still I remained silent.

"You know what our relations have been since our marriage, so I ask you again how does that condition come about?"

I was now trembling more than ever, but a kind of forced courage came to me and I said:

"Why do you ask? You seem to know already."

"I know what anonymous letters have told me, if that's what you mean.

But I'm your husband and have a right to know from _you_. How does your condition come about, I ask you?"

I cannot say what impulse moved me at that moment unless it was the desire to make a clean breast and an end of everything, but, stepping to my desk, I took out of a drawer the letter which Price had intercepted and threw it on the table.

He took it up and read it, with the air of one to whom the contents were not news, and then asked how I came by it.

"It was taken out of the hands of a woman who was in the act of posting it," I said. "She confessed that it was one of a number of such letters which had been inspired, if not written, by your friend Alma."

"My friend Alma!"

"Yes, your friend Alma."

His face assumed a frightful expression and he said:

"So that's how it is to be, is it? In spite of the admission you have just made you wish to imply that this" (holding out the letter) "is a trumped-up affair, and that Alma is at the bottom of it. You're going to brazen it out, are you, and shelter your condition under your position as a married woman?"

I was so taken by surprise by this infamous suggestion that I could not speak to deny it, and my husband went on to say:

"But it doesn't matter a rush to me who is at the bottom of the accusation contained in this letter. There's only one thing of any consequence--is it true?"

My head was reeling, my eyes were dim, my palms were moist, I felt as if I were throwing myself over a precipice but I answered: