“No, my darling,” he said, putting her into a capacious wooden armchair and busily unbuttoning her boots, “you shall do nothing that you don’t wish to do.  Your feet are like stones.  Yes, yes, my dear, I am a wretch unworthy to live.  I know it.”

“Let me alone,” she said piteously.  “I don’t want your attentions.  I have done with you for ever.”

“Come, you must drink some of this nasty stuff.  You will need strength to tell your husband all the unpleasant things your soul is charged with.  Take just a little.”

She turned her face away and would not answer.  He brought another chair and sat down beside her.  “My lost, forlorn, betrayed one—­”

“I am,” she sobbed.  “You don’t mean it, but I am.”

“You are also my dearest and best of wives.  If you ever loved me, Hetty, do, for my once dear sake, drink this before it gets cold.”

She pouted, sobbed, and yielded to some gentle force which he used, as a child allows herself to be half persuaded, half compelled, to take physic.

“Do you feel better and more comfortable now?” he said.

“No,” she replied, angry with herself for feeling both.

“Then,” he said cheerfully, as if she had uttered a hearty affirmative, “I will put some more coals on the fire, and we shall be as snug as possible.  It makes me wildly happy to see you at my fireside, and to know that you are my own wife.”

“I wonder how you can look me in the face and say so,” she cried.

“I should wonder at myself if I could look at your face and say anything else.  Oatmeal is a capital restorative; all your energy is coming back.  There, that will make a magnificent blaze presently.”

“I never thought you deceitful, Sidney, whatever other faults you might have had.”

“Precisely, my love.  I understand your feelings.  Murder, burglary, intemperance, or the minor vices you could have borne; but deceit you cannot abide.”

“I will go away,” she said despairingly, with a fresh burst of tears.  “I will not be laughed at and betrayed.  I will go barefooted.”  She rose and attempted to reach the door; but he intercepted her and said: 

“My love, there is something serious the matter.  What is it?  Don’t be angry with me.”

He brought her back to the chair.  She took Agatha’s letter from the pocket of her fur cloak, and handed it to him with a faint attempt to be tragic.

“Read that,” she said.  “And never speak to me again.  All is over between us.”

He took it curiously, and turned it to look at the signature.  “Aha!” he said, “my golden idol has been making mischief, has she?”

“There!” exclaimed Henrietta.  “You have said it to my face!  You have convicted yourself out of your own mouth!”

“Wait a moment, my dear.  I have not read the letter yet.”