They rode on slowly for fully ten minutes in utter silence, except that
Marston occasionally muttered to himself, as it seemed, in excited
abstraction. Danvers had at first felt naturally offended at the violent
and insulting tone in which he had been so unexpectedly and unprovokedly
addressed; but this feeling of irritation was but transient, and some
fearful suspicions as to Marston's sanity flitted through his mind. In a
calmer and more dogged tone, his companion now addressed him:--

"There is little profit you see, doctor, in worrying me about your
religion," said Marston. "it is but sowing the wind, and reaping the
whirlwind; and, to say the truth, the longer you pursue it, the less I am
in the mood to listen. If ever you are cursed and persecuted as I have
been, you will understand how little tolerant of gratuitous vexations and
contradictions a man may become. We have squabbled over religion long
enough, and each holds his own faith still. Continue to sun yourself in
your happy delusions, and leave me untroubled to tread the way of my own
dark and cheerless destiny."

Thus saying, he made a sullen gesture of farewell, and spurring his
horse, crossed the broken fence at the roadside, and so, at a listless
pace, through gaps and by farm-roads, penetrated towards his melancholy
and guilty home.

Two years had now passed since the decisive event which had forever
separated Marston from her who had loved him so devotedly and so fatally;
two years to him of disappointment, abasement, and secret rage; two years
to her of gentle and heart-broken submission to the chastening hand of
heaven. At the end of this time she died. Marston read the letter that
announced the event with a stern look, and silently, but the shock he
felt was terrific. No man is so self-abandoned to despair and