“My wife?” he repeated, and burst into an imbecile laugh.

“Your wife,” reiterated Mrs. Lecount.

At the repetition of those two words the strain on his faculties relaxed.  A thought dawned on him for the first time.  His eyes fixed on her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily.  “Mad!” he said to himself, with a sudden remembrance of what his friend Mr. Bygrave had told him at Aldborough, sharpened by his own sense of the haggard change that he saw in her face.

He spoke in a whisper, but Mrs. Lecount heard him.  She was close at his side again in an instant.  For the first time, her self-possession failed her, and she caught him angrily by the arm.

“Will you put my madness to the proof, sir?” she asked.

He shook off her hold; he began to gather courage again, in the intense sincerity of his disbelief, courage to face the assertion which she persisted in forcing on him.

“Yes,” he answered.  “What must I do?”

“Do what I told you,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “Ask the maid that question about her mistress on the spot.  And if she tells you the mark is there, do one thing more.  Take me up into your wife’s room, and open her wardrobe in my presence with your own hands.”

“What do you want with her wardrobe?” he asked.

“You shall know when you open it.”

“Very strange!” he said to himself, vacantly.  “It’s like a scene in a novel—­it’s like nothing in real life.”  He went slowly into the house, and Mrs. Lecount waited for him in the garden.

After an absence of a few minutes only he appeared again, on the top of the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house.  He held by the iron rail with one hand, while with the other he beckoned to Mrs. Lecount to join him on the steps.

“What does the maid say?” she asked, as she approached him.  “Is the mark there?”

He answered in a whisper, “Yes.”  What he had heard from the maid had produced a marked change in him.  The horror of the coming discovery had laid its paralyzing hold on his mind.  He moved mechanically; he looked and spoke like a man in a dream.

“Will you take my arm, sir?”

He shook his head, and, preceding her along the passage and up the stairs, led the way into his wife’s room.  When she joined him and locked the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, without making any remark, without showing any external appearance of surprise.  He had not removed either his hat or coat.  Mrs. Lecount took them off for him.  “Thank you,” he said, with the docility of a well-trained child.  “It’s like a scene in a novel—­it’s like nothing in real life.”

The bed-chamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy and old-fashioned.  But evidences of Magdalen’s natural taste and refinement were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that graced and enlivened the aspect of the room.  The perfume of dried rose-leaves hung fra grant on the cool air.  Mrs. Lecount sniffed the perfume with a disparaging frown and threw the window up to its full height.  “Pah!” she said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust, “the atmosphere of deceit!”