myself Geoffrey Delamayn's wife, I
clear Arnold Brinkworth, at once and forever of all suspicion of being
married to me. Can you as certainly and effectually clear him in any
other way? Answer me that, as a man of honor speaking to a woman who
implicitly trusts him!"

She looked him full in the face. His eyes dropped before hers--he made
no reply.

"I am answered," she said.

With those words, she passed him, and laid her hand on the door.

He checked her. The tears rose in his eyes as he drew her gently back
into the room.

"Why should we wait?" she asked.

"Wait," he answered, "as a favor to _me._"

She seated herself calmly in the nearest chair, and rested her head on
her hand, thinking.

He bent over her, and roused her, impatiently, almost angrily. The
steady resolution in her face was terrible to him, when he thought of
the man in the next room.

"Take time to consider," he pleaded. "Don't be led away by your own
impulse. Don't act under a false excitement. Nothing binds you to this
dreadful sacrifice of yourself."

"Excitement! Sacrifice!" She smiled sadly as she repeated the words. "Do
you know, Sir Patrick, what I was thinking of a moment since? Only of
old times, when I was a little girl. I saw the sad side of life sooner
than most children see it. My mother was cruelly deserted. The hard
marriage laws of this country were harder on her than on me. She died
broken-hearted. But one friend comforted her at the last moment, and
promised to be a mother to her child. I can't remember one unhappy day
in all the after-time when I lived with that faithful woman and her
little daughter--till the day that parted us. She went away with her
husband; and I and the little daughter were left behind. She said her
last words to me. Her heart was sinking under the dread of coming death.
'I promised your mother that you should be like my own child to me,
and it quieted her mind. Quiet _my_ mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever
happens in years to come--promise me to be always what you are now, a
sister to Blanche.' Where is the false excitement, Sir Patrick, in old
remembrances like these? And how can there be a sacrifice in any thing
that I do for Blanche?"

She rose, and offered him her hand. Sir Patrick lifted it to his lips in
silence.

"Come!" she said. "For both our sakes, let us not prolong this."

He turned aside his head. It was no moment to let her see that she had
completely unmanned him. She waited for