How long ago? some fifty years ago, for the man looked as old as Sir William. When this occurred to her, her heart gave a leap of joy. Perhaps the story was all a lie--a fiction. He did look almost as old as Sir William; how could it be possible? It must be a lie. When she came as far as this she bathed her eyes and composed herself, and went back to her husband’s room. He was still asleep, and Lady Markham took her usual place where she could watch him without disturbing him, and took her knitting which helped to wile away the long hours of her vigil. If the knitting could but have occupied her mind as it did her hands! but in the quiet all her thoughts came back; her mind became a court of justice, in which the arguments on each side were pleaded before a most anxious, yet, alas, too clear-sighted judge. This stranger, who figured as the accuser, was arraigned before her, and examined in every point of view. He was strange; he was not like the men whom Lady Markham was used to see; but he did not look like an impostor. She tried to herself to prove him so, but she could not do it. He was not like an impostor. In his curious foreignness and presumption, he yet had the air of a true man. But then, she said to herself, how ignorant, how foolish he must be, how incapable of any just thought or feeling of shame. To come to _her_! If he had indeed a claim upon Sir William, there were other ways of making that claim; but that he should come to her--Sir William’s wife--and oh, at such a time! This was the refrain of her thoughts to which she came back and back. As she sat there in the darkened room, her fingers busy with her knitting, her ears intent to hear the slightest movement the sleeper made, this was how her mind was employed. Perhaps when they had gone through all these stages, her thoughts came back with a still more exquisite tenderness to the sick man lying there, she thought, so unconscious of this old, old sin of his which had come back to find him out. How young he must have been at the time, poor boy!--younger than Paul--and away from all his friends, no one to think of him as Paul had, to pray for him--a youth tossed into the world to sink or to swim. Lady Markham’s heart melted with sympathy. And to make up for that youthful folly, in which perhaps he was sinned against as well as sinning, what a life of virtue and truth he had led ever since. She cast her thoughts back upon the past with a glow of tender approval and praise. Who could doubt his goodness? He had done his duty in everything that had been given him to do. He had served his country, he had served his parish, both alike, well; and he had been the Providence of all the poor people dependent upon him. She went over all that part of his career which she had shared, with tears of melancholy happiness coming to her eyes. Nothing there that any one could blame: oh, far from that! everything to be praised. No man had been more good,