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have you.

Maggie, you are cruelly wronging me! I want you, dearest-I must Be reasonable! Be just! How can you distrust me? Before the great Avenger of the wrongs of the helpless, I will offer my vows to be true to you. What is marriage, but a conventional form? The compact is inviolable only when the heart is in accord whit the lips-where the fidelity of the spirit gives a conscience to the memory of vows. The priest who represents the law does not legalise the union of hearts but the commingling of fortunes. What law does love recognise but its own ?"

"Major Rivers," I replied, "my feelings have not yet seduced my judgment into imbecility. I am only to be convinced by clearer arguments than the calling of white black. We both of us know the obligation of marriage-what it confers, what it signifies. You cannot make me your wife, and you know it. What other position would you have me occupy that you think I would accept ?"

"I can make you my wife," he burst out passionately; "make you as honourably my wife as Kate was. You are coming to me! A natural, a holy love, urges you!" he cried. "O my love! my Maggie! trust me!-have faith in me!

My eyes met his. I transferred them with an imploring glance to heaven. Every keen impulse that a devoted love could generate was urging me with a wild unopposable force into acquiescence with his appeals.

"I will not, I cannot, I dare not answer you now," I cried. "Give me time. My mind is a chaos. I can distinguish nothing. My glimmering reason urges me into one prayer-I must have it granted -time !"

'My love tempts me to be inexorable," he said, in a low, sweet, but triumphant voice; "but I can afford to be merciful, for I am sure of you. Your request is granted-I shall be here again to-morrow morning." Clasping my hand he continued, "Do not think to escape me, for I shall never leave Lorton until I take you with me. Now good-bye."

He rapidly crossed the room and left the house.

CHAPTER XI.

THE hours that intervened between his departure and return are stamped upon my memory like so many scars, which torture me even now, torture me very bitterly, when I recur to them.

I knew that my fate was fixed. The decree of my destiny was legibly recorded. My natural strength of soul lay spell-bound in the magic of this fascination.

Still my reason protested against this foregone conclusion. But it had only my heart to confer with, and the victory of my passion was

complete, though my prostrate judgment struggled still to rise and renew the combat.

The only restraining impulse I was sensible of was the memory of Kate. Yet I tremble, I blush, I falter, even in the secrecy of this chamber, to write the confession that I was actuated rather by a feeling of jealousy than of tender reverence or of love for the departed. I had become ignobly jealous to think that another should ever have occupied the place in my lover's heart which, by his own confession of passion, nature had assigned to me; and the temporary sentiment that resulted was, not that I, but that my sister had had no right to him.

But the dead has been amply revenged. The recrimination of fate upon my unworthy thoughts has been fierce enough to satisfy every claim of violated affection.

I had passed a sleepless night and looked pale and worn. My aunt had noticed my appearance at the breakfast-table, and hinted that I was bestowing too much attention on baby-that I was making myself ill with my solicitude. There was an unusual air of kindness towards me in her manner which touched me to the quick. Her old acrimony had fairly vanished. True, now and then the familiar spirit would recur and proclaim itself, either in a fit of sullenness or in a few harsh sentences. But the influence of her son grew in proportion to the length of his absence. His last words to her had evidently disciplined her more effectually than ages of prayer-reading could have done.

The time arrived at which Major Rivers had promised to come. I entered the drawing-room, thinking that I should be relieved of something of the embarrassment of the situation if, instead of receiving me, he was received by me. I took my seat near the table and opened a desk, to appear in the act of writing a letter, should my aunt break in upon me.

He was very punctual. I had not been in the drawing-room ten minutes when I heard his quick eager knock. In a few moments he was shown in. The servant closed the door upon us, and he stood at the end of the room watching me. I looked up. He advanced

quickly, took my two hands, peered closely into my face.

"It is well. I read it in her clear eyes. She loves me; she has resolved; she will be my wife."

Looking up at last I exclaimed:

"My answer is given. I have sealed my own fate. You will be true to me.. you will be true to me.. be forever merciful towards my confidence! Think of the sacrifice you may be exacting from me if ever you should break that oath of devotion to me which you have already sworn, and which you will yet swear again more solemnly before our God."

I left him to fetch my hat. As I passed the nursery I told the nurse to take the baby down to him. I took care to address her through the door, not wishing her to see my face, which still bore the strong traces of my recent tears. I purposely delayed my return that he might have time to fondle his child and send it away again with the nurse. I found that he had practised this small stratagem, and I was able to leave the house with him without being observed by either the nurse or my aunt.

We walked towards the most unfrequented part of the country. Beautiful indeed was the morning, with a clear inspiriting breeze sweeping over a pallid tender sky, and attuning all distant sounds into a gentle music.

We talked of love. Hand in hand with him I walked on, all my doubts laid, my fears dispelled, serenely happy in his presence.

"You ought to have been mine from the first, Maggie. Who could relish your character like me? The dry bread of my solitude will now be. salted. I shall always have with me my companion, my lover, my wife. I don't measure victory by the time it occupies. I measure it by the doubts and the passions that are comprised in the fight. A man hanging over the edge of a precipice seems to live an eternity, till he falls or is rescued. So with me. I thought the time that elapsed between our meetings yesterday and to-day would never go. I protest I have lived through ten years more rapidly. Be easy, Maggie. My victory took me a long time. Your arithmetic of passion may get long figures out of it."

"And what about our future?"

"Our future? It is a shining table-land."

"Be pleased to descend to the commonplace. How about our marriage ?"

"You call our marriage commonplace! If I were to call it so your eyes would grow big with terror and distrust at once. You would say, 'He talks so lightly of marriage-perhaps he doesn't mean to marry me!'"

"But how, when, and where are we to be married?"

"How? Before a registrar. When? The day after to-morrow. Where? In London."

"The day after to-morrow!" I exclaimed.

"To be sure," he responded, "you will leave Lorton to-morrow." I became silent and troubled.

"She is going to cry!" he exclaimed. "Oh you singular little woman! You do not belong to these isles, wee tim'rous thing, but were born in some Icelandic cavern, where Freya, the goddess of souls, espied you, and gave you a little red mouse for a spirit."

But I was not to be inspirited by his banter; so he became

serious.

"Unless you want your aunt to know that your intention is to become my wife

he began.

But I interrupted by vehemently crying,

"I would not have my aunt know for the brightest future of love you could offer me. When it is a fait accompli it will be time enough for her to hear. Then I shall not have to face her."

"Precisely. Wherefore I command that you hold yourself in readiness to accompany me to-morrow by the early train to London. Are you terrified at this proposition?"

"No. I am resolute. It is the only course to adopt."

"Good. We shall give you a warrior's soul yet, instead of a little red mouse."

"How about the baby and the nurse?"

"We will be married first, then post to Newtown. All this will occupy half a dozen hours. Then I will write to the nurse, tell her to bring the child to me, enclose her fare, meet her, and bring her home. See how difficulties vanish when you mean a thing!"

"What will my aunt say!" I exclaimed involuntarily. "How ungrateful she will think me! What a wretch she will call me, to abandon her in her solitude after her recent kindness!"

"Now," he exclaimed, "we are going to be treated to a touch of what I call the sentimentalism of irony."

"There may be some sentimentalism, but there is no irony in what I have said," I answered.

"You are not in earnest in professing any regrets at the thoughts your conduct may give rise to in your aunt?"

"I would not have cared a year or two ago, but latterly she has been treating me with kindness."

CHAPTER XII.

I ASSUME in beginning this chapter the privilege of the playwright, who having dropped his curtain suffers it to rise again on a new act and a

new scene.

Let me show you my home at Newtown. A low long-built house, very white-walled, with windows close fitting, small, and numerously paned with dark burnished glass, after an old but cosy fashion of ' architecture. Chester House stands in very tolerably-sized grounds, well hemmed off from the smooth turnpike road outside the surrounding fields by a low, rugged wall, murderously anointed with broken bottle-glass. The hall door is of oak, well studded with black-headed nails. It might belong to a fortress. As you enter the wide but low hall, on either side of which hang some sombre pictures, a large window of stained glass dyes you with a dim and complicated radiance. It confronts you from the landing on the stairs, and illustrates' Christ's Charge to

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