What shall I do?
How can I remain in doubt such as this?
I said I wished for your help, yet how can you--how can anyone--help me?
Have I unconsciously been the cause of this ?' 'Or has anyone else consciously been so ?' asked the lady, with meaning.
'What?
You think--?
Is it possible ?' 'You only hinted that your relatives were not altogether pleased.' Wilfrid, a light of anger flashing from his eyes, walked rapidly the length of the room.
'She admitted to me,' he said, in a suppressed voice, 'that her illness began before her father's death.

It was not that that caused it.

You think that someone may have interfered?
My father?
Impossible! He is a man of honour; he has written of her in the kindest way.' But there was someone else.

His father was honourable; could the same be said of Mrs.Rossall?
He remembered his conversation with her on the lake of Thun; it had left an unpleasant impression on his mind--under the circumstances, explicable enough.

Was his aunt capable of dastardly behaviour?
The word could scarcely be applied to a woman's conduct, and the fact that it could not made disagreeably evident the latitude conceded to women in consideration of their being compelled to carry on warfare in underhand ways.