For one moment of astonishment and incredulity he thought this man must needs be a fool or a lunatic, so wildly improbable did the accusation seem. But in the next instant the curtain was lifted, and he knew that Philip Sheldon was a villain, and knew that he had never wholly trusted him. "Never until to-day have I told this secret," said the surgeon; "not even to my wife." "I thank you," answered Valentine, in the same faint voice; "with all my heart, I thank you." Yes, the curtain was lifted. This mysterious illness, this slow silent decay of bloom and beauty, by a process inscrutable as the devilry of medieval poisoner or Hecate-serving witch--this was murder. Murder! The disease, which had hitherto been nameless, had found its name at last. It was all clear now. Philip Sheldon's anxiety; the selection of an utterly incompetent adviser; certain looks and tones that had for a moment mystified him, and had been forgotten in the next, came back to him with a strange distinctness, with all their hidden meaning made clear and plain as the broad light of day. But the motive? What motive could prompt the slow destruction of that innocent life? A fortune was at stake, it is true; but that fortune, as Valentine understood the business, depended on the life of Charlotte Halliday. Beyond this point he had never looked. In all his consideration of the circumstances relating to the Haygarthian estate, he had never thought of what might happen in the event of Charlotte's decease. "It is a diabolical mystery," he said to himself. "There can be no motive--_none_. To destroy Thomas Halliday was to clear his way to fortune; to destroy Charlotte is to destroy his chance of fortune." And then he remembered the dark speeches of George Sheldon. "My God! and this was what he meant, as plainly as he dared tell me! He did tell me that his brother was an unutterable scoundrel; and I turned a deaf ear to his warning, because it suited my own interest to believe that villain. For her dear sake I believed him. I would have believed in Beelzebub, if he had promised me her dear hand. And I let myself be duped by the lying promise, and left my darling in the power of Beelzebub!" Thoughts followed each other swift as lightning through his overwrought brain. It seemed but a moment that he had been sitting with his clenched hands pressed against his forehead, when he turned suddenly upon the surgeon. "For God's sake, help me, guide me!" he said. "You have struck a blow that has numbed my senses. What am I to do? My future wife is in that man's keeping--dying, as I believe. How am I to save her?"