Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/292

282 possible that she had left me for that man? I could not believe it. Me she might forsake, but not to give herself to him! Well, I would know the truth—to no concerns of daily life could I attend, while this tempest of doubt and dread, of jealousy and rage distracted me. I would take the morning coach from L—— (the evening one would be already gone), and fly to Grass-dale, I must be there before the marriage. And why? Because a thought struck me, that perhaps I might prevent it—that if I did not, she and I might both lament it to the latest moment of our lives. It struck me that some one might have belied me to her: perhaps her brother—yes, no doubt her brother had persuaded her that I was false and faithless, and taking advantage of her natural indignation, and perhaps her desponding carelessness about her future life, had urged her, artfully, cruelly on, to this other marriage in order to secure her from me. If this was the case, and if she should only discover her mistake when too late to