drew off and was silent.

"He seized the word at once.

"'You have seen nothing. If you think you have, then have you deceived
yourself. Marah Leighton has beauty, but it is not a kind that moves
me--'

"He paled. Was it horror of the lie he was uttering? I have never known,
never shall know.

"'The woman I am going to marry is Honora Dudleigh.'

"I gazed at him, determined to find the truth if it were in him. He bore
my look unflinchingly, though his color did not return, and his hands
trembled nervously.

"'You love her?' I asked.

"'I love her,' he returned.

"'And your wedding day--'

"'Is set.'

"'May it have no interruptions,' I remarked.

"He laughed--an uneasy laugh, I thought--but jealousy was not yet dead
within me.

"'And yours?' he inquired.

"'I have had mine,' I returned. 'I shall never have another.'

"He shook his head and looked at me inquisitively. I repeated my
assertion.

"'I shall never approach the altar again with a woman. I am done with
such things, and done with love.'

"He finished his laugh.

"'Wait till you see Marah Leighton smile again,' he cried; and with the
first reappearance of his old manner that I had seen in him since the
beginning of this interview, he caught up a wine glass off the table,
and filling it with wine, exclaimed jovially: 'Here's to our future
wives! May they be all that love paints them!'

"I thought his mirth indecent, his manner out of keeping with the
occasion, and the whole situation atrocious. But I saw he was about to
leave, and said nothing; but I did not drink his toast. When he was
gone, I broke his glass by flinging it at my own reflection, in a glass
I had bought to mirror her beauty; and before the day was spent, I had
destroyed every destructible article in the house whose value or whose
prettiness spoke of the attempt I had made to alter my home from a
bachelor's abode to the nest I had thought in keeping with the dove I
had failed to place there. As I did it I filled the house with mocking
laughter; that I should have thought that this or that would please her,
who would have found a palace open to criticism, and the splendors of a
throne room scarce grand enough for her taste! I was but suffering the
stings of a lifetime compressed into a day, and was miserable because I
could see no prospect but further addition to my suffering."

CHAPTER XIII.

BEFORE THE WEDDING.

"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my so