Had she but known! Dolff went to his room with a surging of blood to his head and trouble in his heart. It was partly relief--for no doubt to be free of the horror of blood-guiltiness was much: and his heart was unspeakably lightened by the thought that Meredith had recovered, that his own hasty fury, the boiling rage into which he had been driven, was not to have fatal consequences. There was to be no stigma on his soul. He need not now spend all his life with blood upon his head, never knowing when he might be found out and hunted down. But this very relief opened the doors of his mind to the sentiments which had been repressed under the influence of that horror and fear. That Gussy should believe in the man whom he had heard and seen so false--so false! who had jeered and laughed at her devotion and talked of her to another woman, another traitor! that she should hang over his bed and kiss him when he came back to himself! Dolff ground his teeth and muttered an oath of fury. The last thing in the fellow’s consciousness must be that lingering talk with Janet, holding her hands, making love to her--and the next would be Gussy’s kiss! Dolff felt that he could not bear it--the villain, the rascal, the cad! And now he would be courted and petted back to life, he would be surrounded continually by the tenderest care and attention, he would be caressed, and flattered, and consoled, while he, Dolff was desired to be in the house solely that he might, if necessary, run for the doctor! It was too much. Dolff set his teeth, and the thought flashed through his mind that if he had such a deceiver in his hands, nobody near! But if it had not been for the relief of knowing that he had failed that time he would not have dared to think such a thought now. CHAPTER XXXV. Janet was not moved either by Gussy’s rapture or Dolff’s rage. To say that she was not relieved would be untrue, for it was, no doubt, a great relief to know that she was not in any way responsible for a man’s death. But beyond this her strongest feeling was annoyance, a painful sense that she was not quit of the consequences, that he was still there to be reckoned with, more near than ever, under the same roof. Would he be changed as she was by the catastrophe which had nearly cut off his life? or would he, returning to life from his unconsciousness, and probably knowing much less about it than any of those round him, take up everything from the moment the thread had dropped from his hands and expect her to do the same?