Caroline’s death was due to obscure causes for which the doctor found a scientific name that satisfied all legal requirements; but if I have any qualification for diagnosing mortality in the human race, I should be inclined to say that she died of a gradual and cumulative attack of fright. Mr. Trimblerigg had once made her doubt the evidence of her senses--and not only of her own but of the children she had borne to him; and though she had acquiesced submissively at the time--having the negative proof always before her that the glory with which her imagination had surrounded him was departed, that he was in truth no saint, and had not after all taken his baths in cold weather--she was never the same woman again. That she should have imagined so difficult a thing, only to be told that it was a delusion after all, caused a shock to her system. Her breathing became asthmatic, she coughed with nothing to cough for, had flutterings of the heart, and began to wear shawls even when the weather was warm. And waking one night, shortly after Mr. Trimblerigg’s return from Puto-Congo had made them bed-fellows again, she saw or thought she saw upon the pillow beside her a recrudescence of her fear--the thing which could be seen but was not to be believed. Faint, very faint--the product only of a dream--it flushed feebly and passed away. But that single sight, or the mere suspicion of it, gave her a habit of wakefulness which grew on the apprehension that lay at the back of it; and just as people who see spots crossing the field of vision damage their eyesight by pursuing them, or as others who have a singing in their ears go mad in trying to be quit of it; so did Caroline in trying both to realize and get rid of the suspicion she wished to avoid, reduce herself to a nervous wreck; and day by day, eyeing Mr. Trimblerigg with looks whose meaning she would not explain, sank into a despondency which by destroying her domestic efficiency robbed life of its remaining _raison d’être_. And so one morning, after an ecstatic dream of more than usual vividness, Mr. Trimblerigg woke to find her lying very quiet and open-eyed beside him; and though the expression was not peaceful, Caroline had nevertheless found peace; and Mr. Trimblerigg with curiously mixed feelings, yet with a decent modicum of grief which was quite genuine, saw that he had become a widower.