. Instead
of that there came this man with his insidious falsehoods, with
his implied lies; this man, of whom you have always thought so
badly;--and him you believed instead! I tell you that you can justify
yourself before no human being. You were not entitled to repudiate
your wife for such offence as she had committed, you are not entitled
even had there been no mutual affection to bind you together. How
much less so in your present condition,--and in hers. People will
only excuse you by saying that you were mad. And now in order to
put yourself right, you expect that she shall come forward, and own
herself to have been the cause of this misfortune. I tell you that
she will not do it. I would not even ask her to do it;--not for her
sake, nor for your own."

"I am then to go," said he, "and grovel in the dust before her feet."

"There need be no grovelling. There need be no confessions."

"How then?"

"Go to Exeter, and simply take her. Disregard what all the world may
say, for the sake of her happiness and for your own. She will make
no stipulation. She will simply throw herself into your arms with
unaffected love. Do not let her have to undergo the suffering of
bringing forth your child without the comfort of knowing that you are
near to her." Then she left him to think in solitude over the words
she had spoken to him.

He did think of them. But he found it to be impossible to put
absolute faith in them. It was not that he thought that his sister
was deceiving him, that he distrusted her who had taken this long
journey at great personal trouble altogether on his behalf; but that
he could not bring himself to believe that he himself had been so
cruel as to reject his young wife without adequate cause. It had
gradually come across his mind that he had been most cruel, most
unjust,--if he had done so; and to this judgment, passed by himself
on himself, he would not submit. In concealing her engagement she had
been very wrong, but it must be that she had concealed more than her
engagement. And to have been engaged to such a man added much to the
fault in his estimation. He would not acknowledge that she had been
deceived as to the man's character and had set herself right before
it was too late. Why had the man come to his house and asked for
him,--after what had passed between them,--if not in compliance with
some understanding between him and her? But yet he would take her
back if she would confess her fault and