Then, as time went on, she had succeeded in smothering her conscience by reminding herself that Henry had married her in reality against her will, therefore that she had a right to love Stephen if she chose. Later, she had gone a step further by cultivating the habit of analyzing her feelings calmly and dispassionately, and contrasting her lack of affection for her husband with her all-consuming passion for Sir Stephen, and more than once when so engaged she had secretly wondered what would happen to Henry, and for that matter to herself, should Henry by any terrible mishap discover her deep secret. “I believe,” she recollected saying to herself once, “he would either kill Stephen and me, or end his own life.” And now in a flash the thought had come to her--could Henry have, by some means, become aware of her hypocrisy, of the mental double life she had been leading, and in a moment of frenzy at his sudden disillusionment deliberately have ended his existence? And if so, was it possible the writer of the anonymous letter she had just received had been the person to impart that information to her husband, presumably in the hope of extorting blackmail by threatening to make the facts public, and that Henry had in consequence taken his life? A terrible thought, yet the longer she dwelt on it the more plausible the theory appeared to her to be. Quite likely, too, she reflected, that if this were so the scoundrel, foiled in his first attempt to extort payment for the letters, would presently make another attempt, but that before doing so he would let a reasonable period elapse. This discovery, as she believed it to be, and the reflection that now she must either pay the sum demanded or stand disgraced before everybody she knew, drove her almost frantic. In her agony of mind she began to pace the room, trying in vain to evolve some means of escape from her unknown persecutor. Then she began to ask herself whom she could consult, of whom she could take counsel? And again there was nobody. Had the matter been one of less delicacy, less secret, she knew several people, intimate friends others, to whom she would readily have unbosomed herself. But to admit to anyone, even her dearest friend, that she had virtually been carrying on an intrigue, even an harmless intrigue, while married, she felt would be impossible. Besides, would anybody, not excepting her dearest friend, believe the intrigue to have been harmless? Suddenly she stopped pacing the room. She had read in the Jersey paper that morning that on the previous day a Doctor Johnson--the Doctor Johnson whom she had before consulted on very secret matters--had arrived from Weymouth by the ss. _Ibex_ and gone to the Brees Hotel.