Dr. Nevill had soon been able to tell Mrs Trevelyan that her husband’s health had been so shattered as to make it improbable that he should ever again be strong, either in body or in mind.  He would not admit, even when treating his patient like a child, that he had ever been mad, and spoke of Sir Marmaduke’s threat as unfortunate.  ’But what could papa have done?’ asked the wife.

’It is often, no doubt, difficult to know what to do:  but threats are seldom of avail to bring a man back to reason.  Your father was angry with him, and yet declared that he was mad.  That in itself was hardly rational.  One does not become angry with a madman.’

One does not become angry with a madman; but while a man has power in his hands over others, and when he misuses that power grossly and cruelly, who is there that will not be angry?  The misery of the insane more thoroughly excites our pity than any other suffering to which humanity is subject; but it is necessary that the madness should be acknowledged to be madness before the pity can be felt.  One can forgive, or, at any rate, make excuses for any injury when it is done; but it is almost beyond human nature to forgive an injury when it is a-doing, let the condition of the doer be what it may.  Emily Trevelyan at this time suffered infinitely.  She was still willing to yield in all things possible, because her husband was ill, because perhaps he was dying; but she could no longer satisfy herself with thinking that all that she had admitted, all that she was still ready to admit, had been conceded in order that her concessions might tend to soften the afflictions of one whose reason was gone.  Dr. Nevill said that her husband was not mad, and indeed Trevelyan seemed now to be so clear in his mind that she could not doubt what the doctor said to her.  She could not think that he was mad, and yet he spoke of the last two years as though he had suffered from her almost all that a husband could suffer from a wife’s misconduct.  She was in doubt about his health.  ’He may recover,’ the doctor said; ’but he is so weak that the slightest additional ailment would take him off.’  At this time Trevelyan could not raise himself from his bed, and was carried, like a child, from one room to another.  He could eat nothing solid, and believed himself to be dying.  In spite of his weakness, and of his savage memories in regard to the past he treated his wife on all ordinary subjects with consideration.  He spoke much of his money, telling her that he had not altered, and would not alter, the will that he had made immediately on his marriage.  Under that will all his property would be hers for her life, and would go to their child when she was dead.  To her this will was more than just, it was generous in the confidence which it placed in her; and he told his lawyer, in her presence, that, to the best of his judgment, he need not change it.  But still there passed hardly a day in which he did not make some