"What a dreadful thing I have done!" she thought. "How shall I ever be able to make it right with Lord Darsham?" And then Dolly went upstairs into that very room where Mr. and Mrs. Werner had held their colloquy about the Mortomleys, and found Mrs. Werner as nearly insane as a rational woman can ever be. She was full of self-reproach, and Dolly thanked God for it. Knowing what she knew of the man's misery, it would have tried her almost beyond endurance to have listened to the faintest whisper of self-pity, but there was none. Nothing save sorrow for the husband, taken so suddenly, for his children left orphaned, for the years during which she might have made him happier. "I thought myself a good wife," she moaned, "but I was not a good wife. I helped him as I imagined, but, Dolly dear, an ounce of love is worth a pound of pride any day. He wanted, he must have wanted, something more when he returned to this great cold, handsome house than a woman to sit at the head of his dinner table. I have thought about it all at Dassell, Dolly darling. I made up my mind, God helping me, to be more a wife to him than I had ever been, and it is all too late--too late--too late." "I am afraid he had a great deal on his mind," Dolly ventured. "Yes, there can be no doubt about that. He was so fond of business, and thought so much of money, and--" "We won't talk about it, dear, now," Mrs. Mortomley said softly. "Have you--seen him?" Mrs. Werner asked, after a pause. "No," Dolly answered. "I should like to do so, though, if I may." "You have quite forgiven him?" "I had done that, Lenny, thank God, before this." Just a faint pressure of the trembling fingers, and Dolly rose to go downstairs. "Williams, I want to see your master," she said, and Williams forthwith conducted her into the same room where Messrs. Forde and Kleinwort had sat on that night when they came to Mr. Werner's house in quest of Mortomley. There in the same dress he wore when last she saw him alive, he lay stiff and dead. "Why has not something been done with him?" Dolly asked shuddering. "Why do you let him lie there like that?" "We must not move him until after the inquest," said the man. Mrs. Mortomley crept upstairs again--in her folly what had she done? But for her this inquest might have passed over quietly, and a verdict of killed by an accidental dose of chloroform returned. The hours of that day lengthened themselves into years, and when at last Miss Gerace arrived, she found her niece looking the picture of death itself. "My dear child, you must go home," she said, gazing in shocked amazement at Dolly's changed face and figure. "All this is too much for you." But Dolly said, "No; if you love me, aunt, go to Wood Cottage and take care of Archie till I can leave Leonora. I must see the end of it. I will tell you why some day. I cannot leave now."