that! Such heart as she had to give had
been given to himself. But there had been traffic of marriage with
this man, and even continued correspondence and an understanding as
to things which had put her with all her loveliness on a level with
him rather than with her existing husband. What this understanding
was he did not, he said, care to inquire. It had existed and still
did exist. That was enough to make him know that she was untrue to
him as his wife,--untrue in spirit if not in body. But in truth he
did care to know. It was, indeed, because he had not known, because
he had been allowed only to guess and search and think about it, that
all this misery had come. He had been kept in the dark, and to be
kept in the dark was to him, of all troubles, the most grievous. When
he had first received the letter from Sir Francis he had not believed
it to be true;--from first to last it had been a fiction. But when
once his wife had told him that the engagement had existed, he
believed all. It was as though she had owned to him the circumstance
of a still existing intimate friendship. He had been kept in the
dark, but he did not know how far.

But still there loomed to him as to the future, vaguely, the idea
that by the deed he was doing now, at this present moment, he was
sacrificing her happiness and his own for ever,--as regarded this
world. And the people would say that he had done so, the people
whose voices he could not but regard. She would say so, and her
mother,--and he must acknowledge it. And Lady Grant would know that
it had been so, and Mr. Gray would always think so to the end. And
his heart became tender even towards her. What would be her fate,--as
his wife and therefore debarred from the prospects of any other
future? She would live with her mother as any widow would live,--with
much less of hope, with less chance of enjoying her life, than would
any other widow. And when her mother should die she would be all
alone. To what a punishment was he not dooming her!

If he could die himself it would be well for all parties. He had
taken his great step in life and had failed. Why should he doom her,
who was differently constituted, to similar failure? It had been a
great mistake. He had made it and now there was no escape. But then
again his pity for himself welled up in his heart. Why had he been
so allured, so deceived, so cozened? He had intended to have given
all good things. The very essence of his own being