loved
him, that I would have freely sacrificed my own happiness for his."

"And yet you betrayed him," Gilbert said in a low distinct voice. "But
that may be forgiven, if you have been guilty of no deeper wrong than
that. John Saltram, as you have a soul to be saved, what have you done
with Marian--with--your wife?"

It cost him something, even in that moment of excitement, to pronounce
those two words.

"Killed her!" the sick man answered with the same mad laugh. "She was too
good for me, you see; and I grew weary of her calm beauty, and I sickened
of her tranquil goodness. First I sacrificed honour, friendship,
everything to win her; and then I got tired of my prize. It is my nature,
I suppose; but I loved her all the time; she had twined herself about my
heart somehow. I knew it when she was lost."

"What have you done with her?" repeated Gilbert, in a low stern voice,
with his grasp upon John Saltram's arm.

"What have I done with her? I forget. She is gone--I wanted my freedom;
I felt myself fettered, a ruined man. She is gone; and I am free, free to
make a better marriage."

"O God!" muttered Gilbert, "is this man the blackest villain that ever
cumbered the earth? What am I to think, what am I to believe?"

Again he repeated the same question, with a stem kind of patience, as if
he would give this guilty wretch the benefit of every possible doubt, the
unwilling pity which his condition demanded. Alas! he could obtain no
coherent answer to his persistent questioning. Vague self-accusation, mad
reiteration of that one fact of his loss; nothing more distinct came from
those fevered lips, nor did one look of recognition flash into those
bloodshot eyes.

The time at which this mystery was to be solved had not come yet; there
was nothing to be done but to wait, and Gilbert waited with a sublime
patience through all the alternations of a long and wearisome sickness.

"Talk of friends," Mrs. Pratt exclaimed, in a private conference with the
nurse; "never did I see such a friend as Mr. Fenting, sacrificing of
himself as he do, day and night, to look after that poor creature in
there, and taking no better rest than he can get on that old horsehair
sofy, which brickbats or knife boards isn't harder, and never do you hear
him murmur."

And yet for this man, whose, battle with the grim enemy, Death, he
watched so patiently, what feeling could there be in Gilbert Fenton's
heart in all the days to come but hatred or