Then he thought of Christine.  But she did not move him now, for she was never likely to hear of it.  She was confined to her bed; she read nothing but her Bible; she saw no one but her nurse.  He would charge the nurse, and he would keep all papers and letters from her.  He thought of nothing now but the near gratification of a revengeful purpose for which he had waited twenty years.  Oh, how sweet it seemed to him!

The dinner was to be in a week, and during the next few days he was like a man in a bad dream.  He neglected his business, and wandered restlessly about the house, and looked so fierce and haggard that Christine began to notice, to watch, and to fear.  She knew that Donald was in the city, and her heart told her that it was his presence only that could so alter her husband; and she poured it out in strong supplications for strength and wisdom to avert the calamity she felt approaching.

That night her nurse became sick and could not remain with her, and James, half reluctantly, took her place, for he feared Christine’s influence now.  She would ask him to read the Bible, to pray with her; she might talk to him of death and heaven; she might name Donald, and extract some promise from him.  And he was determined now that nothing should move him.  So he pretended great weariness, drew a large chair to her bedside, and said,

“I shall try and sleep a while, darling; if you need me you have only to speak.”

CHAPTER VI.

He was more weary than he knew, and ere he was aware he fell asleep—­a restless, wretched sleep, that made him glad when the half-oblivion was over.  Christine, however, was apparently at rest, and he soon relapsed into the same dark, haunted state of unconsciousness.  Suddenly he began to mutter and moan, and then to speak with a hoarse, whispered rapidity that had in it something frightful and unearthly.  But Christine listened with wide-open eyes, and heard with sickening terror the whole wicked plot.  It fell from his half-open lips over and over in every detail; and over and over he laughed low and terribly at the coming shame of the hated Donald.

She had not walked alone for weeks, nor indeed been out of her room for months, but she must go now; and she never doubted her strength.  As if she had been a spirit, she slipped out of bed, walked rapidly and noiselessly into the long-unfamiliar parlor.  A rushlight was burning, and the key of the old desk was always in it.  Nothing valuable was kept there, and people unacquainted with the secret of the hidden drawer would have looked in vain for the entrance to it.  Christine had known it for years, but her wifely honor had held it more sacred than locks or keys could have done.  She was aware only that James kept some private matter of importance there, and she would as readily have robbed her husband’s purse as have spied into things of which he did not speak to her.