He did not for a moment suppose that his lie could long outlive Walter Clifford's return; but he was getting desperate, and longing to stab them all.

Unfortunately fate befriended the villain's malice, and the husband and wife did not meet again till that diabolical poison had done its work.
Monckton retired, put off his old man's disguise behind the fir-trees, and went toward another of his hiding-places, an enormous oak-tree which stood in the hedge of Hope's cottage garden.

The subtle villain had made this hollow tree an observatory, and a sort of sally-port, whence he could play the fiend.
The people at the hotel were, as Mary told Julia Clifford, very honest people.
They showed Percy Fitzroy's bracelet to one or two persons, and found it was of great value.

This made them uneasy, lest something should happen to it under their charge; so the woman sent her husband to the neighborhood of Clifford Hall to try and find out if there was a lady of that name who had left it.

The husband was a simple fellow, very unfit to discharge so delicate a commission.