the suppressed tone of his speaking, or from her own terror and
surprise, she had not clearly understood; but enough had reached her
alarmed ear to satisfy her that they were of a nature in the last
degree licentious and insulting. Terrified and shocked rather than
indignant, for she too easily presumed the man to be a maniac, she
hurried homewards; and was rejoiced, on first venturing to look round
when close to her own gate, to perceive that the man was not following.
There, however, she was mistaken; for either on this occasion, or on
some other, he had traced her homewards. The last of these rencontres
had occurred just three months before the fatal 6th of April; and if,
in any one instance, Agnes had departed from the strict line of her
duty as a wife, or had shown a defect of judgment, it was at this
point--in not having frankly and fully reported the circumstances to
me. On the last of these occasions I had met her at the garden-gate,
and had particularly remarked that she seemed agitated; and now, at
recalling these incidents, Agnes reminded me that I had noticed that
circumstance to herself, and that she had answered me faithfully as to
the main fact. It was true she had done so; for she had said that she
had just met a lunatic who had alarmed her by fixing his attention upon
herself, and speaking to her in a ruffian manner; and it was also true
that she did sincerely regard him in that light. This led me at the
time to construe the whole affair into a casual collision with some
poor maniac escaping from his keepers, and of no future moment, having
passed by without present consequences. But had she, instead of thus
reporting her own erroneous impression, reported the entire
circumstances of the case, I should have given them a very different
interpretation. Affection for me, and fear to throw me needlessly into
a quarrel with a man of apparently brutal and violent nature--these
considerations, as too often they do with the most upright wives, had
operated to check Agnes in the perfect sincerity of her communications.