at nothing could have justified her silence. "Yes, George; the time
will come that you will understand her altogether although you are
far from doing so now."

"I believe you think her to be perfect," said he.

"Hardly perfect, because she is a human being. But although I know
her virtues I have not known her faults. It may be that she is too
proud,--a little unwilling, perhaps, to bend. Most women will bend
whether they be in fault or not. But would you wish your wife to do
so?"

"I, at any rate, have not asked her."

"You, at any rate, have not given her the opportunity. My accusation
against you is, that you sent her away from you on an accusation made
solely by that man, and without waiting to hear from herself whether
she would plead guilty to it."

"I deny it."

"Yes; I hear your denial. But you will have to acknowledge it, at any
rate to yourself, before you can ever hope to be a happy man."

"When he wrote to me, I believed the whole story to be a lie from
first to last."

"And when you found that it was not all a lie, then it became to you
a gospel throughout. You could not understand that the very faults
which had induced her to break her engagement were of a nature to
make him tell his story untruly."

"When she acknowledged herself to have been engaged to him it nearly
broke my heart."

"Just so. And, with your heart broken, you would not sift the truth.
She had committed no offence against you in engaging herself."

"She should have told me as soon as we knew each other."

"She should have told you before she accepted your offer. But she had
been deterred from doing so by your own revelation to her. You cannot
believe that she intended you always to be in the dark. You cannot
imagine that she had expected that you should never hear of her
adventure with Sir Francis Geraldine."

"I do not know."

"I had heard it, and she knew that I had heard it."

"Why did you not tell me, then?"

"Do you suppose that I wished to interfere between you and your
wife? Of course I told her that you ought to know. Of course I
told her that you ought to have known it already. But she excused
herself,--with great sorrow. Things had presented themselves in such
a way that the desired opportunity of telling you had never come."
He shook his head. "I tell you that it was so, and you are bound
to believe it of one of whom in all other respects you had thought
well;--of one who loved you with the fondest devotion