"Love has always been very impatient of law"; he declared, "but the fact is that unless proof of an exceptional character can be submitted, the English law is not prepared to say of any man that he is dead until seven years have passed from the last record of him among the living. Now there is rather a serious difference between seven years and nine months, Jenny." "Looking back I seem to see nothing but a long nightmare. 'Nine months!' It was a century. Don't think that I didn't love my first husband; I adored him and I adore his memory; but the loneliness and the sudden magic of this man. Besides all that, surely none could question the hideous proofs of what happened? I accepted Michael's death as a fact which need not enter the calculation. My God! Why did not somebody hint to me that I was doing wrong to wed?" "Did anybody have a chance?" She looked at him with a face full of unhappiness. "You are right. I was possessed. I made a terrible mistake; but do not fear that I have escaped the punishment." He guessed her meaning and led her away from the subject of her husband. "Tell me, if it won't hurt you too much, a little about Michael Pendean." But she appeared not to hear him. Her thoughts were concerned entirely with herself and her present situation. "I can trust you. You are wise and know life. I have not married a man, but a devil!" Her hands clenched and he saw a flash of her teeth in the gloom of the silent chamber. He took snuff and listened, while the unfortunate woman raved of her error. "I hate him. I loathe him," she cried, and heaped hard words on the head of the debonair Giuseppe. She broke off presently panted, and then subsided in tears. Peter studied her very carefully, yet, for the moment, showed no great sympathy. His answer was tonic rather than sedative. "You must keep your nerve and be patient," he said. "Even Italy's a free country in some respects; you need not stop with Doria if you don't want to." "Might my husband be alive? Do you imagine it possible that he could be alive? I think of him as my husband again, now that this midsummer madness is over. I have much to say to you. I want you--I pray you--to help me as well as my uncle. But he must come first, of course."