And all this time he could hear nothing of the woman he loved. He could not talk to his servants, and he had closed his doors against all visitors. What was she doing? Was she at Graybridge still? Was she leading the old quiet life, sitting in that shabby parlour, where he had sat by her side? He remembered the pattern of the Kidderminster carpet, the limp folds of the muslin-curtains, the faded crimson silk that decorated the front of the piano upon which she had sometimes played to him, oh, so indifferently. Day after day he haunted the bridge under Lord Thurston's oak; day after day he threw tribute of cigar-ends into the waterfall, while he waited in the faint hope that the Doctor's Wife might wander thither. Oh, how cruel she was; how cruel! If she had ever loved him, she too would have haunted that spot. She would have come to the place associated with his memory: she would have come, as he came, in the hope of another meeting. Sometimes Mr. Lansdell ventured to ride along the little street at Graybridge and through the dusty lane in which the doctor's house stood. On horseback the master of Mordred Priory was almost on a level with the bedroom windows of George Gilbert's habitation, and could look down into the little parlour where Isabel was wont to sit. Once and once only he saw her there, sitting before the table with some needlework in her hands, so deeply absorbed, as it seemed, in her commonplace labour that she did not see the cavalier who rode so slowly past her window. How should he know how often she had run eagerly to that very window--her face pale, her heart beating tempestuously--only to find that it was not his horse whose hoof she had heard in the lane? Perhaps the sight of George Gilbert's wife sitting at her needlework gave Roland Lansdell a sharper pang than he would have felt had he seen two mutes from Wareham keeping guard at the gate, and Mrs. Gilbert's coffin being carried out at the door. She was not dead, then: she could live and be happy, while he----! Well, he was not dead himself, certainly; but he was the very next thing to being dead; and he felt indignant at the sight of Isabel's apparent composure.