What more could he learn?
Yet he went on questioning her.
She swore that she had loved him, that she had quite done with the
other when she married him, had been true to him in thought and deed
ever since their marriage. But she had been tempted two or three
times, through her aunt. Mr. Barradine had desired that she should
understand with what affection he always regarded her, and he invited
her to meet him; and it was the knowledge that he had come to covet
her again that made her sure she could get him to do anything for her.
At the same time the knowledge terrified her; and when Dale's trouble
began, and things with him seemed to be going from bad to worse, she
felt as if a sort of waking nightmare was drawing nearer and nearer.
She wrote to Mr. Barradine, simply asking him to exert this influence
on behalf of her husband; and the reply--the letter that she tore
up--was in these words: "I will do what I can; but why don't you come
and ask me yourself?" Of course she knew what that meant.
It was at the railway station, when bidding Dale good-by, that she
made up her mind to save him at all costs. When he refused to act on
Ridgett's advice, when he showed himself so firm, so unyielding, she
knew that he was a man going to his doom, unless she could avert the
doom.
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