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Once May saw her husband. Lord Forestfield drove through Podbury-street in a hansom cab, sitting well back, with his arms crossed and a pleasant smile upon his face. With her renewed feeling for him, May would rather not have seen that smile; it showed that he was happy and careless, while she was suffering such acute misery. In the eyes of the world she was the guilty one, and had to bear the consequences of her guilt; but in his own inmost mind he must know that he had been at least equally criminal, and that if it had not been for his neglect and desertion of her she would never have committed the crime for which he was now exacting so fearful a penalty.

And as she pondered over this a horrible idea flashed across her; a passage in De Tournefort's letter recurred to her mind, in which, speaking of Lord Forestfield, he had said, 'he will be at liberty to carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.' What could that mean? What but that her husband had determined on divorcing her, with the view of marrying some one else to whom he had been long attached. Of marrying some one else! The fact that he himself was married had had no effect in preventing his forming other connections, but marriage while she lived undivorced was for him impossible; it was in that view, then, that he had determined on pursuing his vengeance to the bitter end.