In the conflict of feeling and passion in which Gilbert Lloyd was thus engaged, there was no element of fierce contention wanting. Love, or the debased feeling which he called and believed to be love, and which fluctuated between passion and hate, baffled design, undefined fear, and jealousy, in which not merely Gertrude was concerned, but another who had a place in his life of still darker and more fatal meaning, and a more bitterly resented influence over his fate. When he had fought out the skirmish with the newly reawakened love for the wife whom he had almost forgotten, and been beaten, and had been forced to surrender so much of the disputed ground to the enemy, fear marshalled its forces against him, and pressed him hard. But not to the point of victory. Gilbert Lloyd was a man with whom fear had never had much chance; and if he had yielded somewhat to its influence in the separation from his wife, it was because that influence had been largely supported by long-smouldering discontent, _ennui_, a coincidence of convenience and opportunity, and a deserved conviction that the full potency or Gertrude's will was at work in the matter. There was little likelihood that fear should master him now; but it was there, and he had to stand, and repel its assaults. If he attempted to molest, to control Gertrude in any way; if it even became her interest or her pleasure to get rid of him in actual fact, in addition to their convenient theory,--fear asked him, Can she not do so? Is she not mistress of the situation, of every point of it? And he answered, Yes. If she chose to carry out the divorce--which they had mutually instituted without impertinent legal interference--would he dare to intervene? He remembered how he had speculated upon the expediency of encouraging the "rich brute's" penchant for the fashionable singer, when he had no suspicion who the fashionable singer was; and a rush of fury surged all over him as he thought, if she had chosen to encourage him, to marry him, for his rank, would he, Gilbert Lloyd, her husband, have dared to interfere? Fear had the best of it there; but he would not be beaten by fear. This enemy was strong mainly because he could not rightly calculate its strength. How much did Gertrude know, or how little? Was it knowledge, or suspicion only, which had prompted her to the decision she had adopted, and the prompt action she had taken upon it? To these questions it was impossible he could get any answer; and he would, or thought he would, just then--for he was an unlikely man to stick to such a bargain, if he could have made it--have given years of his life to know what had passed that memorable day at Brighton, before he had returned to the deathbed of his friend, and there encountered Gertrude. The dying whisper which had conveyed to the young woman the power she had used so promptly was unknown by Lloyd; on this point--the great, the essential point of his musings--all was conjecture, dark, terrifying,