She made no reply, so after greeting Otterburn, Eustace conducted them to a carriage, and they drove to the Hotel de la Mer. Alizon lost no time, but asked to be taken at once to her husband's room. Eustace tried to prepare her mind, so that the shock of seeing him should not be too much, but she disregarded all his entreaties, and went up to the darkened apartment where her husband was lying. One question only she asked Gartney before she entered: "Is that woman here?" "Do you think I would have sent for you had she been?" he replied, deeply hurt. "No I She has left San Remo, and will trouble you no more." "Your doing?" "Yes." She gave him her slender, black-gloved hand for a moment, and then passed to her husband's bedside, where her place was henceforth to be. The next morning Otterburn, having discharged his duty, returned to his wife, and Lady Errington was left alone with Eustace to nurse the man whom she never thought to meet with kindly feeling again. Guy was terribly ill for a long time, but as out of evil good sometimes comes, there was no doubt that this illness was beneficial, inasmuch as it showed Alizon the true state of her husband's heart. In those long, dreary hours, as she sat beside the bed listening to his incoherent ravings, she heard sufficient to convince her that Guy had always tenderly loved her--that his apparent infidelity was the result of despair, and that a word of forgiveness from her would have saved him from the misery he had suffered. No explanation on the part of Eustace Gartney--no explanation from her husband, had he been in good health--would have convinced her of the truth, and there would always have lurked in her heart a terrible suspicion that she had been sinned against, which would have embittered her whole life. She would have perhaps forgiven her husband, but she nevertheless would have believed him guilty, and his presence would have been a constant regret and reproach to the purity of her soul. But these wild mutterings, these agonised ravings, revealed the true state of things--revealed at once his weakness and his strength; so little by little the scales fell from her eyes, and she saw how noble was this nature, how weak was the soul, and how needful to its well-being was love and tenderness.