"Is she not dead now? Was she living when you married me? Am _I_ your
wife?"

He could hardly help smiling. His calm touch reassured her.

"Do you think you need ask, Anne? The next year Dr. Mair called upon me
again--it was the evening before the boy was christened; he had come to
London on business of his own. To my dismay, he told me that a change for
the better was appearing in Miss Waterlow's mental condition; and he
thought it likely she might be restored to health. Of course, it
increased the perplexities and my horror, had that been needed; but the
hope or fear, or what you like to call it, was not borne out. Three years
later, the doctor came to me for the third and final time, to bring me
the news that Agnes was dead."

As the relief had been to him then, so did it almost seem now to Anne. A
sigh of infinite pain broke from her. She had not seen where all this was
tending.

"Imagine, if you can, what it was for me all those years with the
knowledge daily and nightly upon me that the disgraceful truth might at
any moment come out to Maude--to her children, to the world! Living in
the dread of arrest myself, should the man Gordon show himself on the
scene! And now you see what it is that has marred my peace, and broken
the happiness of our married life. How could I bear to cross those two
deeply-injured children, who were ever rising up in judgment against me?
How take our children's part against them, little unconscious things? It
seemed that I had always, daily, hourly, some wrong to make up to them.
The poor boy was heir to Hartledon in the eyes of the world; but, Anne,
your boy was the true heir."

"Why did you not tell me?--all this time!"

"I could not. I dared not. You might not have liked to put Reginald out
of his rights."

"Oh, Percival; how can you so misjudge me?" she asked, in tones of pain.
"I would have guarded the secret as jealously as you. I must still do it
for Maude."

"Poor Maude!" he sighed. "Her mother forgave me before she died--"

"She knew it, then?"

"Yes. She learned--"

Sounds of drumming on the door, and the countess-dowager's voice, stopped
Lord Hartledon.

"I had better face her," he said, as he unlocked it. "She will arouse the
household."

Wild, intemperate, she met him with a volley of abuse that startled Lady
Hartledon. He got her to a sofa, and gently held her down there.

"It's what I've been obliged to do all along," said Thomas Carr; "I don't
believe