He shook off this suggestion as blasphemy. Emily? His high-souled Emily, upon whose faith he would stake the breath of his life? Was his own reason failing him? Worn out, he reached the house in the middle of the afternoon, and went to his own sitting-room. Presently a servant came and asked whether he would take luncheon. He declined. Lying on the sofa, he still tormented himself with doubt whether he might speak with Mrs. Baxendale. That lady put an end to his hesitation by herself coming to his room. He sprang up. 'Don't move, don't move!' she exclaimed in her cheery way. 'I have only come to ask why you resolve to starve yourself. You can't have had lunch anywhere?' 'No; I am not hungry.' 'A headache?' she asked, looking at him with kind shrewdness. 'A little, perhaps.' 'Then at all events you will have tea. May I ask them to bring it here?' She went away, and, a few minutes after her return, tea was brought. 'You found Emily looking sadly, I'm afraid?' she said, with one of the provincialisms which occasionally marked her language. 'Yes,' Wilfrid replied; 'she looked far too ill to be up.' He had seated himself on the sofa. His hands would not hold the tea-cup steadily; he put it down by his side. 'I fear there is small chance of her getting much better in that house of illness,' said Mrs. Baxendale, observing his agitation. 'Can't we persuade her to go somewhere? Her mother is in excellent hands.' 'I wish we could,' Wilfrid replied, clearly without much attention to his words. 'You didn't propose anything of the kind?' He made no answer. A short silence intervened, and he felt there was no choice but to declare the truth. 'The meeting was a very painful one,' he began. 'It is difficult to speak to you about it. Do you think that she has perfectly recovered?--that her mind is wholly--' He hesitated; it was dreadful to be speaking in this way of Emily. The sound of his voice reproached him; what words would not appear brutal in such a case? 'You fear--?' Wilfrid rose and walked across the room. It seemed impossible to speak, yet equally so to keep his misery to himself. 'Mrs. Baxendale,' he said at length, 'I am perhaps doing a very wrong thing in telling you what passed between us, but I feel quite unable to decide upon any course without the aid of your judgment. I am in a terrible position. Either I must believe Emily to speak without responsibility, or something inexplicable, incredible, has come to pass. She has asked me to release her. She says that something has happened which makes it impossible for her ever to fulfil her promise, something which must always remain her secret, which I may not hope to understand. And with such dreadful appearance of sincerity--such a face of awful suffering--' His voice failed. The grave concern on Mrs. Baxendale's visage was not encouraging. 'Something happened?' the latter repeated, in low-toned astonishment. 'Does she offer no kind of explanation?'