He was forced to do now that which he had just declared that he had never done in his life,--driven by the desire of his heart to acquit the wife he had lost of the terrible imprudence, worse than imprudence, of which she was now accused.
"That is the second time, my Lord, that you have found it necessary to tell me that you have not believed direct assertions which I made you.

But, luckily for me, the two assertions are capable of the earliest and most direct proof.

You will believe Lady Mary, and she will confirm me in the one and the other." The Duke was almost beside himself with emotion and grief.

He did know,--though now at this moment he was most loath to own to himself that it was so,--that his dear wife had been the most imprudent of women.

And he recognised in her encouragement of this most pernicious courtship,--if she had encouraged it,--a repetition of that romantic folly by which she had so nearly brought herself to shipwreck in her own early life.