“You cannot yet acquit Frederic of wrong-doing! Indeed, Mrs. Sutton, he has been foully wronged among you. It is not because he is my husband that I say this. Mabel's name has never passed his lips---nor mine in his hearing, since I became his wife. And every one of the family has been equally guarded when he was by. I doubt, sometimes, if he has ever heard whom she married or where she lives--so carefully has he shunned every reference to her or any of the Ridgeley people. During the nine years we have lived together, he has given me no cause to suspect that he ever thinks of her, or laments the broken engagement. If I have made myself wretched by imagining the contrary, it was my fault, not his--my foolish, wicked jealousy. I would scorn to imply a doubt of his integrity, by reminding him of the charges proferred against him by Winston Aylett, and believed by his sister--much less ask him to contradict them. I never put any faith in them from the outset. It comforts me to recollect that my confidence in him stood fast when everybody else distrusted him--my noble, slandered darling! But my declaration of his innocence is founded upon his blameless life and upright principles. No one could be with him as I have been, and doubt him. He is a perfect man--if there was ever a sinless mortal--great-hearted, gentle, and sincere. Do not I know this? Have I not proved him to the utmost?” Her rapid, impassioned declamation was ended by a copious flood of grief that provoked a frightful fit of coughing. When this was subdued she was weaker than a year-old infant, and lay between stupor and dreaming for so long a time, that Mrs. Sutton became alarmed. There must be no repetition of this scene. She most ward off similar mishaps by whatever measures she could force or cajole her conscience into adopting. Rosa's state was more precarious than her account had led her friend to believe, or than the nurse's experienced eye had seen at their meeting. The main hope of her recovery was in the warmer climate and assiduous attendance. Above all, she should not be allowed to exhaust herself by talking, or hysterical paroxysms. She had no more self-control than a child, and she must be treated as such. Mrs. Sutton's jesuitical resolve was to humor her by every imaginable device, even to feigned friendship for Frederic Chilton.