He had not stooped to the meanness before, but now, telling himself it was his duty, he had her watched, finding in one of the servants a willing tool; but his news was always of the most meagre; and growing daily more morose, Sir Murray now gave way to a fresh belief--he felt sure that his wife corresponded with some one at the Hall. At one time he made up his mind to leave the neighbourhood--to return to Como; but he stubbornly decided to the contrary, thinking that it would turn attention to his family affairs. Then he decided to see "that unhappy woman at the Hall," as he termed her, and to enlighten her upon the state of affaire, while, if possible, he would secure her as his coadjutor. He even went so far, during one of Norton's absences, as to ride over; but he repented, and returned home more and more disposed for solitude and misery; for he had almost grown to love his sense of injury, pitying himself, and feeling that he was a martyr, seeing nothing but the past, believing nothing but the evidence of his own eyes, and resolutely shutting himself out from the happiness that might have been his portion. Suspicion is a ravenous monster, devouring all before it. Matters the most ill-suited often become its food, as the simplest acts of the suspected are magnified into guilt. The feeling grew stronger and stronger every hour that he was being cleverly tricked; but though he waited day after day for the coming enlightenment, it came not. It must be, then, by night that some arrangement or correspondence was made; and his brow grew blacker, and his head sank upon his breast, as he muttered the thought. The months had glided by rapidly, when, one night, after a long, gloomy day, he retired to his bedroom--a different chamber to that he had before used--but not to sleep; for, throwing himself upon a low couch, he lay thinking of his present life, and asking his heart what was to be the end?--whether it was possible that a reconciliation would ever take place, and something, if not of happiness, of quiet esteem and smoothness of life-course return? He could not conceive it possible; it seemed to him then that death alone could be the termination of such a state of being. It was a gloomy introduction to his thoughts, that word death, and he frowned more heavily as it oppressed him. Should he die himself? The distance was but short, he knew, between here and eternity. But one step, and all would be over: the wretchedness and misery of his life, his torturing suspicions, the great mistake of the past, all swept away in an instant; but then afterwards?