“Not enough for Fitzgerald, it seemed,” answered Randolph, significantly. “Monica, I am glad you did not know more, since you have met that man as a friend. Forgiveness is beautiful and noble—but there are limits. I will tell you the whole story, but in brief. The Colonel Hamilton of whom you heard in connection with the forgery was Fitzgerald’s best and kindest friend. He was a friend of my mother’s and of mine. I knew him intimately, and saw a good deal of his _protégé_ at his house and at Oxford. I did not trust him at any time. It was no very great surprise when, after a carefully concealed course of vulgar dissipation, he ended by disgracing himself in the way you have heard described. It cut Hamilton to the quick. ‘Why did not the lad come to me if he was in trouble? I would have helped him,’ he said. He let me into the secret, for I happened to be staying with him at the time; but it was all hushed up. Fitzgerald was forgiven, and vowed an eternal gratitude, as well as a complete reformation in his life.” “Did he keep his promise?” asked Monica in a whisper. “You shall hear how,” answered Randolph, with a gathering sternness in his tone not lost upon Monica. “From that moment it seemed as if a demon possessed him. I believe—it is the only excuse or explanation to be offered—that there is a taint of insanity in his blood, and that with him it takes, or took, the form of an inexplicable hatred towards the man to whom he owed so much. About this time, Colonel Hamilton, till then a bachelor, married a friendless, beautiful young wife, to whom in his very quiet and undemonstrative way he was deeply and passionately attached, as she was to him. But she was very young and very inexperienced, and when that man, with his smooth false tongue, set himself to poison her life by filling her mind with doubts of her husband’s love, he succeeded but too well. She spoke no word of what she suffered, but withdrew herself in her morbid jealous distress. She broke the faithful heart that loved her, and she broke her own too. It sounds a wild and foolish tale, perhaps, to one who does not understand the mysteries of a passionate love such as that; but it is all too true. I had been absent from England for some time, but came home, all unconscious of what had happened, to find my friend Hamilton in terrible grief. His young wife lay dying—dying of a rapid decline, brought on, it was said, by mental distress; and worse than all, she could not endure her husband’s presence in the room, but shrank from him with inconceivable terror and excitement. He was utterly broken down by distress. He begged me to see her, and to learn if I could, the cause of this miserable alteration. I did see her. I did get her to tell her story. I heard what Conrad Fitzgerald had done; and I was able, I am thankful to say, to relieve her mind of its terrible fear, and to bring her husband to her before the end had come. She