WHEN Chumney was gone Ebenezer Piper walked up and down the narrow track in the pine plantation, ruminating upon what he had been told. Why should any man, however princely in his ideas, make a gift of two hundred and thirty guineas to another man’s wife? Such a thing could hardly happen, without implying evil design in the giver. Bella might be innocent, but this man was guilty. This gift of the horse was one act of many, all tending towards a villanous conclusion. And then there came back upon Mr. Piper’s mind the whole history of his wife’s acquaintance with Captain Standish--how this man, whose reputation had been made by an insolent exclusiveness, had been, from his introduction at the Park, a constant visitor. Mr. Piper had been flattered by this distinction, and had ascribed Captain Standish’s preference to an Epicurean appreciation of his fine house, and an intellectual pleasure in his conversation. Now, all at once, he saw the past in a new light, and knew that he had been blind, and deaf, and foolish. Bella’s pretty face had been the attraction; Bella’s winning manners had been the lure. ‘If I thought that she had encouraged him, knowing his drift, if I knew that she had been false to me by so much as one erring thought, I would have done with her at once and for ever. She owes me too much. No, it is impossible. It isn’t in human nature to be so base. And that pretty little smiling face of hers--no, that could not lie.’ This was how he argued with himself. Yet there was no assurance in his mind. His self-respect was strong still, his belief in his own claims and merits still unshaken; but there had appeared to him a vision of a phenomenal falsehood, a preternatural iniquity in woman. ‘If he spent his money for that horse, and she accepted the gift knowingly, it was not his first gift,’ he said to himself. ‘There have been letters passing between them, perhaps. I’ll search her room, and if I find one shred of evidence against her she shall stand condemned. I’ll have no half-measures. Either she’s my true and honest wife, or she’s--something that shall have no shelter under my roof. She must be all or nothing to me.’ He went back to the house. ‘Has your missus come back?’ he asked the footman idling in the hall. ‘No, sir.’