The events of the last forty-eight hours had shaken her badly.

Her brother's tragic death, and the terrible suspicion which enveloped Sisily, had stripped her of her strength, and left her with a feminine longing to cast her burden on a man's shoulders.

She had discovered to her dismay that a husband who has been snubbed and kept under for twenty years is apt to prove a thing of straw when a woman likes to feel that the male sex was devised by Providence to take the wheel from female hands if the barque of life drifts on the breakers.

But Mr.
Pendleton had revealed no latent capacity to play the part of the strong man at the helm in the crisis.

He had shown himself a craven and kept out of the way, leaving his wife to her own resources.