She bent down her head again to its resting-place, and folded her arm round him in token of forgiveness. "And called her '_My dearest_.' I was standing there, Robert, behind the bench. I saw and heard all." Not a word spoke he. He hardly dared to accept the loving sign of pardon, or to press her to him. Had she glanced up she would have seen his face in a hot glow. These little private episodes may be very gratifying in the passing, but it is uncommonly disagreeable to find out that your wife has made a third at them. "It was very thoughtless of me to run out from the heated room on that cold damp night without anything on," she resumed hastily, as if conscious of the feeling and wishing to cover it "But oh! I was so unhappy--scarcely, I think, in my senses. I thought you had not returned from Guild: Fanny came in and said you had been home a long while and were with her. An impulse took me that I would go and see: I never did such a thing in my life; never, never, before or since: and I opened the glass doors and went out. I was half way down the shrubbery when I heard you coming into it from a cross walk, and I darted into the green alcove, and stood back to hide myself; not to spy upon you." She paused, but was not interrupted. Mrs. Lake began to hurry over her tale. "So you see that, in a measure, she was the cause of the cold which struck to me. And then I was laid up; and many a time when you deemed I should fancy you were out shooting, or had gone to Guild, or something or other, you were with her. I knew it all. And since we came home, you have been ever restless to go to her--leaving me alone--even on Christmas-day." Ay: even on Christmas-day. He almost gnashed his teeth, in his self-condemnation. She, with her impassioned and entire love for him, with her rare and peculiar temperament that, as the doctor had observed, a rude blow would destroy! The misery of mind reacting upon a wasted frame! He no longer wondered why she was dying. "Why could you not speak out and tell me this?" "But that the world seems to have nearly passed away from me, and that earthly passions--pride, self-reticence, shame, I mean the shame of betraying one's dearest feelings, are over--I could not tell you now." "But don't you see the bed of remorse you have made for me? Had I suspected the one quarter of what you tell me you felt, the woman might have gone to the uttermost ends of the earth, for me. I wish you had spoken." "It might not have prevented it. My belief is that it would not. It was to be." Mr. Lake looked at her. "You remember the dream: how it shadowed forth that I was to meet, in some way, my death through going to Mrs. Chester's." "Child! Can you still dwell upon that dream?" "Yes. And so will you when the hearse comes here to take me away. Never was a dream more completely worked out. Not quite yet: it will be shortly. I have something else to tell you; about it and her."