When he was fairly gone she suddenly broke down, and falling upon her knees in the passage beat her forehead against the wall in an agony of despair.
Murderer--thief, forger and murderer, too! It was more than she could bear.

Even now he was within a stone's throw of her house; a moment ago he had been here, beside her--there beyond, too, in the dining-room, sitting opposite to her at her own table as he had sat in his days of innocence and honour for many a long year before his crime.

In the sudden necessity of acting, in the unutterable surprise of finding herself again face to face with him, she had been calm; now that he was gone she felt as though she must go mad.

She asked herself if this filthy tramp, this branded villain, was the husband she had loved and cherished for years, whose beauty she had admired, whose hand she had held so often, whose lips she had kissed--if this was the father of her lovely child.

It was all over now.