her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever spoken to
him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or
she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man.

She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.

'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she sometimes
whispered to herself. And then she thought of the apparent cause, and
said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, 'If I could only again
be as I was when he first saw me!'

She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a
hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure altogether.
She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house
of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred
to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance
from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was
entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in
the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as
she now knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-
will. The visit should be paid.

This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and
roamed a considerable distance out of her way. Trendle's house was
reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at
the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at
work a long way off. Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful
of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he
offered to accompany her in her homeward direction, as the distance was
considerable and the days were short. So they walked together, his head