owned up, perhaps, to the place where she had hid the gold. But if he
killed her, her secret might die with her, or the servants who were in
her confidence might themselves secure the treasure. Again, she had
plenty of spirit, and, indeed, rather seemed to enjoy a fight, and it
was possible that bullying might not cause her to try to conciliate him
by revealing the whereabouts of the hidden treasure. So Bryan took the
course that he judged would make things the most unpleasant for his
wife, and which would at the same time rid him of her. He simply
disappeared.

And now the poor little lady, fierce enough in quarrel, and bitter
enough in tongue, was inconsolable. In spite of all--it is one of the
most inscrutable of the many inscrutable points in the nature of some
women--in spite of all, she had loved her great, strong, brutal,
bullying husband, and probably was only jealous of the gold because he
had showed too plainly that in his estimation it, and not she, came
first. Her days, unhappy enough before, were now spent in fruitless
misery, waiting for him who returned never again. A year and a day
passed, and still no tidings came to her of Bryan de Blenkinsopp. The
deserted wife could bear no longer her life in this alien country, and
she, too, with all her servants, went away. Folk, especially those who
had always in their hearts suspected her of being an imp of Satan, said
that no man saw them go. Probably she went in search of her husband; but
whether or not she ever found him, or whether she made her way back to
the land from which she had come, none can say, for from that day to
this all trace is lost of husband and of wife. Only the tale remained in
the country people's minds; and probably it lost nothing in the telling
as the years rolled on.

The story of the White Lady of Blenkinsopp became one to which the