George had no more visits, except from his advocate, for the next two days; but on the third he received a note from the Colonel, dated from England, and written in a perturbed and rather constrained tone, containing a backward shot at his foolishness in marrying a girl of whom he knew nothing, some sincere condolences and regrets at his situation, and a useful expression of fear that he, the Colonel, was “in for it now.” On the whole, the possibility that Chloris White would now turn her attention entirely to him seemed to have swamped Lord Florencecourt’s kindliness, and George wrote him the following answer not without some bitter feelings: “Dear Lord Florencecourt, “I thank you very much for the kind things you say. But as for my marriage, which you deplore as the beginning of the mess I am in, I assure you I am just in the same mind about it as I was at the time when I gave my name to the forlorn little creature whose natural guardians had left her at the mercy of they didn’t care who. I don’t stand so well in the world now as I did then, but I think I am no worse a man for having loved something better than my ambition, and taught my wife to love something better than her trinkets. I have done my best to secure her nearest male relation from annoyance, and I think I have succeeded; I hope that this circumstance will induce him to make every effort to find her and take care of her, if his instinct does not. I pray you, with the solemn prayer of a man who may be dead to the world, to persuade him to this. If I were satisfied about her, they might do what they liked to me and welcome. “Yours very sincerely, “George Lauriston.” Within a fortnight of Chloris White’s visit George, ill and feverish from neglected cold and reduced to a state of almost imbecile disquietude not for himself, but for the wife of whose fate no one could, or no one dared to give him tidings, was examined by the judge, according to French law, and brought up for trial. The proceedings produced in him not even a languid appearance of interest; accusation and defence seemed to his worn-out weary brain only a long monotonous buzz of unmeaning words, and when the verdict was pronounced, he did not know whether it was more or less severe than he had expected. He was acquitted of the charge of wilful murder, but found guilty of homicide, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. George repeated the words to himself, trying to realise them. But all he knew was that he was thankful the trial was over. CHAPTER XXIX. It is well for the wounded spirit when the body falls sick in sympathy, and the piercing thoughts become blunted into vague fancies, and the heavy load of doubt and despair falls off with the responsibilities of sane and sound existence.