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322 masked and mitigated by his drug-taking. While in this condition he never ceased to rave against his wife, although I am quite certain that he had not, even in his sanest moments, any reason up to the present so to do.

"Traitor! traitor!" he would yell out. "I know you hate me! Kill me now! Do for me! I know; I have seen the loathing in your eyes," and so on. His pitying relations would stand by and nod their heads, look at each other and say among themselves: "We always knew it, didn't we? Why did he marry her?" and so on, ad nauseam.

They would not allow her into the sick-room. Not that she cared, for who could have cared for a man like that? But the ignominy, the disgrace in front of the servants, hurt her, and I felt that this could not go on.

The greatest care was necessary. He must certainly die of something which was likely and reasonable—some ailment absolutely above suspicion, something which must, if necessary, stand the searching of an expert post-mortem examination, because it would be fatal to trust in any way whatsoever the ultimate movements or suspicions of the very prejudiced and narrow-minded women with whom I now had to deal and contend.