by the dean. That was clearly another mistake. She knew, or thought she
knew, that he, being such as he was, might make blunders such as these,
and yet be true. She believed that such statements might be blunders and
not falsehoods--so convinced was she that her husband's mind would not
act at all times as do the minds of other men. But having such a
conviction she was driven to believe also that almost anything might be
possible. Soames may have been right, or he might have dropped, not the
book, but the cheque. She had no difficulty in presuming Soames to be
wrong in any detail, if by so supposing she could make the exculpation
of her husband easier to herself. If villainy on the part of Soames was
needful to her theory, Soames would become to her a villain at once--of
the blackest die. Might it not be possible that the cheque having thus
fallen into her husband's hands, he had come, after a while, to think
that it had been sent to him by his friend, the dean? And if it were so,
would it be possible to make others so believe? That there was some
mistake which would be easily explained were her husband's mind lucid at
all points, but which she could not explain because of the darkness of
his mind, she was thoroughly convinced. But were she herself to put
forward such a defence on her husband's part, she would in doing so be
driven to say that he was a lunatic--that he was incapable of managing
the affairs of himself or his family. It seemed to her that she would be
compelled to have him proved to be either a thief or a madman. And yet
she knew that he was neither. That he was not a thief was as clear to
her as the sun at noonday. Could she have lain on this man's bosom for
twenty years, and not yet have learned the secrets of the heart beneath?
The whole mind of the man was, as she told herself, within her grasp. He
might have taken the twenty pounds; he might have taken it and spent it,
though it was not his own; but yet he was no thief. Nor was he a madman.
No man more sane in preaching the gospel of his Lord, in making
intelligible to the ignorant the promises of his Saviour, ever got into