A noise in the room overhead: Susanna’s death chamber. Marian gave a great start, and understood what Eliza meant by having “the life put across in her.” She listened, painfully conscious of the beats of her heart. The noise came again: a footstep, or a chair pushed back, or—she was not certain what. Could Mrs. Myers be watching at the bedside? It was not unlikely. Could Susanna be recovering—finding herself laid out for dead, and making a struggle for life up there alone? That would be inconvenient, undesirable: even Marian forgot just then to consider that obvious view wrong and unfeeling; but, anyhow, she must go and see, and, if necessary, help. She wished there were some one to keep her company; but was ashamed to call Eliza; and she felt that she would be as well by herself as with Mrs. Myers. There was nothing for it but to take a candle and go alone. No repetition of the noise occurred to daunt her afresh; and she reached the landing above almost reassured, and thinking how odd it was that the idea of finding somebody—Susanna—there, though it had come as a fear, was fading out as a disappointed hope. Finding herself loth to open the door, she at last set her teeth and did it swiftly, as if to surprise someone within. She did surprise some one: her husband, sitting by his sister’s body. He started violently on seeing her, and rose; whilst she, mechanically shutting the door without turning, leaned back against it with her hand behind her, and looked at him open-mouthed. “Marian,” he said, in a quite unexpectedly apprehensive tone, putting up his hand deprecatingly: “remember, here”—indicating the figure on the bed—“is an end of hypocrisy! No unrealities now: I cannot bear them. Let us have no trash of magnanimous injured husband, erring but repentant wife. We are man and woman, nothing less and nothing more. After our marriage you declined intercourse on those terms; and I accepted your conventions to please you. Now I refuse all conventions: you have broken them yourself. If you will not have the truth between us, avoid me until I have subsided into the old groove again. There!” he added, wincing, “dont blush. What have you to blush for? It was the only honest thing you ever did.” “I dont understand.” “No,” he said gently, but with a gesture of despair; “how could you? You never did, and you never will.” “If you mean to accuse me of having deceived you,” said Marian, greatly relieved and encouraged by a sense of being now the injured party, “you are most unjust. I dont excuse myself for behaving wickedly, but I _never_ deceived you or told you a falsehood. Never. When he first spoke wrongly to me, I told you at once; and you did not care.”