John Parke woke next morning to see his wife in her dressing gown, moving vaguely about the room, a shadow against the full summer light that came in at all the windows. He could not make out at first what she was doing, prowling about in a curious monotonous round from window to window, pausing to look out, as it seemed, at the edge of the blind, first of one, then of another. He watched her for a little while in vague alarm. During all this time a vague but painful suspicion was in John’s mind. He knew better than anyone how she had looked forward to a new state of affairs. Had she not drawn even him to that vile anticipation to plan and calculate upon the boy’s death? The pain of the thought that he had done so made more intense his sense of the terrible revulsion in her mind when all these horrible hopes came to an end. He was not a man who naturally divined what was going on in the minds of others, but the movement in his own, on this occasion, and the instinctive knowledge which long years of companionship had vaguely, magnetically conveyed to him about his wife--not a matter of reflection or reason, but simply of impression--kept a dull light about Letitia which surrounded no other person upon earth. Something like sympathy mingled with and increased his power of comprehending during this dreadful crisis. How would she make up her mind to it, he asked himself, notwithstanding the horror and shame with which he thought of the calculations he himself had been seduced into sharing. He knew very well how little she liked to be foiled, how she struggled against disappointment, and got her will in defiance of every combination of circumstances. During all the previous day he had been very uneasy, certain that in her long absence she was planning something, wondering what she could plan that would have any effect upon the present state of affairs--fearing--he knew not what. John could not allow himself to think that his wife would contemplate harming the boy. Oh, no, no! such a thought was not in his mind. Letitia had her faults. She had never been kind to Mar. She had thought of him as an interloper, as an intruder, as supplanting Duke--and she had not concealed her feeling. But harm him--by so much as a touch. Oh, no! no! Nevertheless, John had been very uneasy all day, and even in his sleep this gnawing discomfort had not left him. He had dreamed of deathbeds and dying persons, and of strange scenes of chaos in which she was always present, though he knew not for what purpose. And when he woke suddenly and saw her wandering about the room in the high clear morning light like a ghost, all the uneasiness of the previous day, all the troubled dreams of the night came back upon his heart. He watched her for a minute without making any sign, and then he called “Letitia!” His voice made her start violently--but she came towards him at once, wrapping her dressing-gown round her as though she felt cold.