pain: 'I think her health is good.'

Had they quarrelled? He said he had not heard a word of Mrs. Warwick for
several months.

'I--heard from her this morning,' said Lady Dunstane, and motioned him to
a chair beside the sofa, where she half reclined, closing her eyes. The
sight of tears on the eyelashes frightened him. She roused herself to
look at the clock. 'Providence or accident, you are here,' she said.
'I could not have prayed for the coming of a truer' man. Mrs. Warwick is
in great danger . . . . You know our love. She is the best of me,
heart and soul. Her husband has chosen to act on vile suspicions--
baseless, I could hold my hand in the fire and swear. She has enemies,
or the jealous fury is on the man--I know little of him. He has
commenced an action against her. He will rue it. But she . . . you
understand this of women at least;--they are not cowards in all things!
--but the horror of facing a public scandal: my poor girl writes of the
hatefulness of having to act the complacent--put on her accustomed self!
She would have to go about, a mark for the talkers, and behave as if
nothing were in the air-full of darts! Oh, that general whisper!--it
makes a coup de massue--a gale to sink the bravest vessel: and a woman
must preserve her smoothest front; chat, smile--or else!--Well, she
shrinks from it. I should too. She is leaving the country.'

'Wrong!' cried Redworth.

'Wrong indeed. She writes, that in two days she will be out of it.
Judge her as I do, though you are a man, I pray. You have seen the
hunted hare. It is our education--we have something of the hare in us
when the hounds are full cry. Our bravest, our best, have an impulse to