He approached a couch, on which could be dimly seen the prostrate figure of a woman. The figure did not move as he drew near. He stood over the couch and looked down upon his wife. She was lying on her back. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face very pale. Her eyes, too, were partly open. He waved the candle across the eyes. No sign of consciousness. He called "Bee" softly two or three times. No answer. Could it be she was really dead? Really dead after all? He stooped down and put his ear over her mouth. No, this was not death. This was--brandy. He shook her slightly. He caught her by the shoulder and shook her more strongly, calling her name into her ear. She responded by neither sound nor motion. Then putting the candle down on the floor he stood up, folded his arms, and reflected intently with his eyes fixed on her. Not death but brandy, and yet how like death, and how near death! How near death! And still in the interval between this and death lay his ruin, his destruction. A blanket thrown on that face would bridge over the interval between this state and death, and give him a golden road to happiness and glorious prosperity. His wife! This his wife here, degraded thus! This woman whom he had loved with all the love he had ever given woman! This woman, whom he had married in defiance of his father's wish and all worldly wisdom! Great God, was this to be borne? She had brought herself nigh death. She was nigh death now. It might be she would never awake. It was quite possible she might never awake. But then the hideous scandal! The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Grey, wife of Henry Walter Grey, Esq., died of excessive drink! Intolerable! And yet this wretched woman lying here had made such a thing not only possible but probable. Suppose she should never wake, what an unendurable position for him! He could not live through that odious inquest, never survive that degrading verdict. He should throw himself into the Weeslade, or blow out his brains first. Any time she might get into such a condition and never awake! Great God! this was a view of the case he had never taken until now. He had always had the dread of disclosure before his mind, but now he should have the infinitely more appalling horrors of a coroner's jury and a coroner's verdict. This was insupportable. Abominable! Any time in the future she might die as she was now. Then no doubt he should be a widower, but a widower under what a terrible shadow! Suppose she should die now, and by any means it should come out that he had deliberately placed the brandy in her way, he had better leave Daneford at once. They would look on him as a murderer. As a murderer! They would _know_ he had put a fatal temptation in his wife's path. The discovery was what he dreaded. Suppose she never woke again--ah! Suppose she never got up alive off that couch! Never got up from where she lay!