Observe, how this reticence--on the part of Macbeth--contrasted with his wife's eagerness and exultation, makes her, for the moment, seem the wickeder of the two--the fiercer and the more cruel. For the moment only; for we soon ask ourselves what means this un-husbandly reserve in him who had sent her _that letter_--and then a messenger to tell her the king was coming--and who had sworn to himself as savagely as she now does, not to let slip this opportunity of cutting his king's throat. He is well-pleased to see that his wife is as bloody-minded as himself--that she will not only give all necessary assistance--as an associate--but concert the when, and the where, and the how--and if need be, with her own hand deal the blow. SEWARD. She did not then know that Macbeth had made up his mind to murder Duncan that very night. _But we know it._ She has instantly made up hers--we know how; but being as yet unassured of her husband, she welcomes him home with a Declaration that must have more than answered his fondest hopes; and, therefore, he is almost mute--the few words he does utter seem to indicate no settled purpose--Duncan may fulfil his intention of going in the morning, or he may not; but we know that the silence of the murderer now is because the murderess is manifestly all he could wish--and that, had she shown any reluctance, he would have resumed his eloquence, and, to convert her to his way of thinking, argued as powerfully as he did when converting himself. BULLER. You carry on at such a pace, sir, there's no keeping up with you. Pull up, that I may ask you a very simple question. On his arrival at his castle, Macbeth finds his wife reading a letter from her amiable spouse, about the Weird Sisters. Pray, when was that letter written? NORTH. At what hour precisely? That I can't say. It must, however, have been written before Macbeth had been presented to the King--for there is no allusion in it to the King's intention to visit their Castle. I believe it to have been written about an hour or so after the prophecy of the Weirds--either in some place of refreshment by the roadside--or in such a Tent as this--kept ready for the General in the King's Camp at Forres. He despatched it by a Gilly--a fast one like your Cornwall Clipper--and then tumbled in. BULLER. When did she receive it? NORTH. Early next morning. BULLER. How could that be, since she is reading it, as her husband steps in, well on, as I take it, in the afternoon? NORTH.