He thought with an uncontrollable pang of all that bright, fair beauty he had loved so long and so fondly lying cold in the grave--those lips that had kissed him so tenderly sealed in death, the white lids shut forever over the heaven of love in those soft blue eyes. "Will that content you, Lawrence?" asked the old man, wistfully, pausing with his hat in his hand. "A month is not so very long." "That depends on the mood one is in," was the unsatisfactory reply. "But you will wait?" Mr. Lyle said, almost pleadingly. There was a minute's pause, and then the answer came, coldly: "I will wait." "Thanks--and farewell," said Mr. Lyle, passing silently out of the room. The outraged husband was alone once more, the red glow of the sunset shining into the room and touching with its tender warmth his pallid, marble-like features. He could not rest. Mr. Lyle's words re-echoed in his ears, turning his warm blood to an icy current that flowed sluggishly through his benumbed veins. "In a month she may be in her grave--oh! the horror of that thought," he said, aloud. Yes, it was horror. He thought he hated her--she had deceived him so bitterly--he thought he was anxious to sever the tie that bound them together; he thought he never wished to look upon her beautiful, false face again. And yet, and yet those words of Mr. Lyle's staggered him. He reeled beneath the suddenness of the blow. He asked himself again as he had asked Mr. Lyle: "What is this mysterious illness that holds her in its chains?" He did not know, he did not dream of the truth. If he had known it, he must surely have forgiven her and taken her back. He could not have hated her longer, even though she had sinned and deceived him. For he had loved her very dearly, and she was his wife. But he said to himself: "Why should I care if she dies? She deceived me shamefully. She can never be anything to me again. In either case, as that old man said, I shall be free. What will it matter to me, then, if she be dead or alive; I shall never see her again!" And then when he began to understand that she might die before her testimony was given before the court in her own defense, he became conscious of a vague feeling of disappointment. He knew now that he had been very anxious all along to hear what his wife would say when she stood face to face with her accuser. Perhaps, after all, she could vindicate herself. If not, why was she so anxious to make the attempt? "Have I wronged her?" he asked himself, suddenly. "Should I have condemned her without hearing her version of that villain's story? Ah! he would not have dared deceive me!" CHAPTER XL. Suddenly a serving-man entered with a card in his hand. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said. Captain Ernscliffe took the bit of pasteboard in his hand and looked at it. He started with surprise as he did so. "C. M. Kidder," was the name he read.