danger of being forced to submit to abuse from any one."

"True," murmured the doctor.

"But I think I can prove to you that you were not mistaken in your first estimate of her character. This illness of hers--was it real or could it have been feigned?"

"It was real. There is no doubt about that."

"You saw her when she was only semi-conscious, when she was physically incapable of acting a part--did she during that time, either by word or look, betray moral perversity?"

"She did not." The doctor's anger had abated and he was listening to Cyril intently.

"How, then, can you doubt her? And if she is what she seems, she is certainly neither my mistress nor a thief; and if she is not the one nor the other, she must be my wife, and if you go to the police with your absurd suspicions, you will only succeed in making yourself ridiculous."

There was a pause during which the two men eyed each other keenly. "You make a great point of the fact that my wife had in her possession a number of valuable ornaments," continued Cyril. "But why should she not? My wife insisted on having all her jewelry with her at Charleroi, and when she escaped from there, they were among the few things she took with her. The excitement of meeting her so unexpectedly and her sudden illness made me forget all about them, otherwise I would have taken them out of the bag, which, as you may have noticed, was not even locked. But the very fact that I did forget all about them and allowed them to pass through the hands of nurses and servants, that alone ought to convince you that I did not come by them dishonestly. You had them for days in your possession; yet you accuse me of having prevented you from examining them. That is really ridiculous! Your whole case against me is built on the wildest conjectures, from which you proceed to draw perfectly untenable inferences. My wife looks young for her age, I grant you; but even you would not venture to swear positively that she is not twenty-eight. You fancied that I neglected her; consequently I am a brute. She is sane now; so you believe that she has never been otherwise. You imagined that I did not wish you to examine the contents of my wife's bag, therefore the Wilmersley jewels must have been in it."

"What you say sounds plausible enough," acknowledged the doctor, "and it seems impossible to associate you with anything cruel, mean, or even underhand, and yet--and yet--I have an 

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