The letter was kind and
affectionate; it came to her hungry heart like dew to a thirsty flower.
A sudden idea occurred to Lord Arleigh. He would go to England and find
out all about the unfortunate man Dornham. Justice had many victims; it
was within the bounds of possibility that the man might have been
innocent--might have been unjustly accused. If such--and oh, how he
hoped it might be!--should prove to be the case, then Lord Arleigh felt
that he could take his wife home. It was the real degradation of the
crime that he dreaded so utterly--dreaded more than all that could ever
be said about it. He thought to himself more than once that, if by any
unexpected means he discovered that Henry Dornham was innocent of the
crime attributed to him, he would in that same hour ask Madaline to
forgive him, and to be the mistress of his house. That was the only real
solution of the difficulty that ever occurred to him. If the man were
but innocent he--Lord Arleigh--would never heed the poverty, the
obscurity the humble name--all that was nothing. By comparison it seemed
so little that he could have smiled at it.
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