The Law and the Lady

inspired by that one obstinate conviction. He fancied himself to be still living with me under those dreaded conditions. Do what he might, I was always recalling to him the terrible ordeal through which he had passed. He acted his part, and he acted mine. He gave me a cup of tea; and I said to him, 'We quarreled yesterday, Eustace. Is it poisoned?' He kissed me, in token of our reconciliation; and I laughed, and said, 'It's morning now, my dear. Shall I die by nine o'clock to-night?' I was ill in bed, and he gave me my medicine. I looked at him with a doubting eye. I said to him, 'You are in love with another woman. Is there anything in the medicine that the doctor doesn't know of?' Such was the horrible drama which now perpetually acted itself in his mind. Hundreds and hundreds of times I heard him repeat it, almost always in the same words. On other occasions his thoughts wandered away to my desperate project of proving him to be an innocent man. Sometimes he laughed at it. Sometimes he mourned over it. Sometimes he devised cunning schemes for placing unsuspected obstacles in my way. He was especially hard on me when he was inventing his preventive stratagems—he cheerfully instructed the visionary people who assisted him not to hesitate at offending or distressing me. 'Never mind if you make her angry; never mind if you make her cry. It's all for her good; it's all to save the poor fool from dangers she doesn't dream of. You mustn't pity her when she says she does it for my sake. See! she is going to be insulted; she is going to be deceived; she is going to disgrace herself without knowing it. Stop her! stop her!' It was weak of me, I know; I ought to have kept the plain fact that he was out of his senses always present to my mind: still it is true that my hours passed at my husband's pillow were many of them hours of mortification and misery of which he, poor dear, was the innocent and only cause.

The weeks passed; and he still hovered between life and death.

I kept no record of the time, and I cannot now recall the exact date on which the first favorable change took place. I only remember that it was toward sunrise on a fine winter morning when we were relieved at last of our heavy burden of suspense. The surgeon happened to be by the bedside when his patient awoke. The first thing he did, after looking at Eustace, was to caution me by a sign to be silent and to keep out of sight. My mother-in-law and I both knew what this meant. With full hearts we thanked God together for giving us back the husband and the son.

The same evening, being alone, we ventured to speak of the future—for the first time since we had left home.

'The surgeon tells me,' said Mrs. Macallan, 'that Eustace is too weak to be capable of bearing anything in the nature of a surprise for some days to come. We have time to consider whether he is or is not to be told that he owes his life as much to your care as to mine. Can you find it in your heart to leave him, Valeria, now that God's mercy has restored him to you and to me?'

'If I only consulted my own heart,' I answered, 'I should never leave him again.'

Mrs. Macallan looked at me in grave surprise.

'What else have you to consult?' she asked.

'If we both live,' I replied, 'I have to think of the happiness of his life and the happiness of mine in the years that are to come. I can bear a great deal, mother, but I cannot endure the misery of his leaving me for the second time.'

'You wrong him, Valeria—I firmly believe you wrong him—in thinking it possible that he can leave you again.'

'Dear Mrs. Macallan, have you forgotten already what we have both heard him say of me while we have been sitting by his bedside?'

'We have heard the ravings of a man in delirium. It is surely hard to hold Eustace responsible for what he said when he was out of his senses.'

'It is harder still,' I said, 'to resist his mother when she is pleading for him. Dearest and best of friends! I don't hold Eustace responsible for what he said in the fever—but I do take warning by it. The wildest words that fell from him were, one and all, the faithful echo of what he said to me in the best days of his health and his strength. What hope have I that he will recover with an altered mind toward me? Absence has not changed it; suffering has not changed it. In the delirium of fever, and in the full possession of his reason, he has the same dreadful doubt of me. I see but one way of winning him back: I must destroy at its root his motive for leaving me. It is hopeless to persuade him that I believe in his innocence: I must show him that belief is no longer necessary; I must prove to him that his position toward me has become the position of an innocent man!'

'Valeria! Valeria! you are wasting time and words. You have tried the experiment; and you know as well as I do that the thing is not to be done.'

I had no answer to that. I could say no more than I had said already.

'Suppose you go back to Dexter, out of sheer compassion for a mad and miserable wretch who has already insulted you,' proceeded my mother-in-law. 'You can only go back accompanied by me, or by some other trustworthy person. You can only stay long enough to humor the creature's wayward fancy, and to keep his crazy brain quiet for a time. That done, all is done—you leave him. Even supposing Dexter to be still capable of helping you, how can you make use of him but by admitting him to terms of confidence and familiarity—by treating him, in short, on the footing of an intimate friend? Answer me honestly: can you bring yourself to do that, after what happened at Mr. Benjamin's house?'

I had told her of my last interview with Miserrimus Dexter, in the natural confidence that she inspired in me as relative and fellow-traveler; and this was the use to which she turned her information! I suppose I had no right to blame her; I suppose the motive sanctioned everything. At any rate, I had no choice but to give offense or to give an answer. I gave it. I acknowledged that I could never again permit Miserrimus Dexter to treat me on terms of familiarity as a trusted and intimate friend.

Mrs. Macallan pitilessly pressed the advantage that she had won.

'Very well,' she said, 'that resource being no longer open to you, what hope is left? Which way are you to turn next?'

There was no meeting those questions, in my present situation, by any adequate reply. I felt strangely unlike myself—I submitted in silence. Mrs. Macallan struck the last blow that completed her victory.

'My poor Eustace is weak and wayward,' she said; 'but he is not an ungrateful man. My child, you have returned him good for evil—you have proved how faithfully and how devotedly you love him, by suffering all hardships and risking all dangers for his sake. Trust me, and trust him! He cannot resist you. Let him see the dear face that he has been dreaming of looking at him again with all the old love in it, and he is yours once more, my daughter—yours for life.' She rose and touched my forehead with her lips; her voice sank to tones of tenderness which I had never heard from her yet. 'Say yes, Valeria,' she whispered; 'and be dearer to me and dearer to him than ever!'

My heart sided with her. My energies were worn out. No letter had arrived from Mr. Playmore to guide and to