entirely."

"He is going to marry me because he loves me," she answered hotly;
"that's why he is going to marry me."

At the next moment a faintness came over her, and a misty vapour flashed
before her sight. In her anger she had torn open a secret place in her
own heart, and something in the past of her life seemed to escape as
from a tomb.

"Then you have not told him?" said the Baron in so low a voice that he
could scarcely be heard.

"Told him what?" she said.

"The truth--the fact."

She caught her breath and was silent.

"My child, you are doing wrong. There is a secret between you already.
That is a bad basis to begin life upon, and the love that is raised on
it will be a house built on the sand."

Her heart was beating violently, but she turned on him with a burning
glance.

"What do you mean?" she said, while the colour increased in her cheeks
and forehead. "I am a good woman. You know I am."

"To me, yes! The best woman in the world."

She had risen to her feet, and was standing by the chimney-piece.

"Understand me, my child," he said affectionately. "When I say you are
doing wrong, it is only in keeping a secret from the man you intend to
marry. Between you and me ... there is no secret."

She looked at him with haggard eyes.

"For me you are everything that is sweet and good, but for another who
knows? When a man is about to marry a woman, there is one thing he can
never forgive. Need I say what that is?"

The glow that had suffused her face changed to the pallor of marble, and
she turned to the Baron and stood over him with the majesty of a statue.

"Is it you that tell me this?" she said. "You--you? Can a woman never be
allowed to forget? Must the fault of another follow her all her life?
Oh, it is cruel! It is merciless.... But no matter!" she said in another
voice; and turning away from him she added, as if speaking to herself:
"He believes everything I tell him. Why should I trouble?"

The Baron followed her with a look that pierced to the depths of her
soul.

"Then you have told him a falsehood?" he said.

She pressed her lips together and made no answer.

"That was foolish. By-and-by somebody may come along who will tell him
the truth."

"What can any one tell him that he has not heard already? He has heard
everything, and put it all behind his back."

"Could nobody bring conviction to his mind? Nobody whatever? Not even
one who had no interest in slandering you?"

"Yo