e
story being finished, she took him straight to the parlour where he had
seen Marian for the first time after her marriage.

It was a warm bright day, and all three windows were open. Marian was
sitting by one of them, with some scrap of work lying forgotten in her
lap. She started up from her seat as Gilbert went into the room, and
hastened forward to meet him.

"How good of you to come!" she cried. "And you have brought me news of my
husband? I am sure of that."

"Yes, dear Mrs. Holbrook--Mrs. Saltram; may I not call you by that name
now?--I know all; and have forgiven all."

"Then you know how deeply he sinned against you, and how much he valued
your friendship? He would never have played so false a part but for that.
He could not bear to think of being estranged from you."

"We are not estranged. I have tried to be angry with him; but there are
some old ties that a man cannot break. He has used me very ill, Marian;
but he is still my friend."

His voice broke a little as he uttered the old familiar name. Yes, she
was changed, cruelly changed, by that ordeal of six months' suffering.
The brightness of her beauty had quite faded; but there was something in
the altered face that touched him more deeply than the old magic. She was
dearer to him, perhaps, in this hour than she had ever been yet. Dearer
to him, and yet divided from him utterly, now that he professed himself
her husband's friend as well as her own.

Friendship, brotherly affection, those chastened sentiments which he had
fancied had superseded all warmer feelings--where were they now? By the
passionate beating of his heart, by his eager longing to clasp that faded
form to his breast, he knew that he loved her as dearly as on the day
when she promised to be his wife; that he must love her with the same
measure till the end of his existence.

"Thank God for that," Marian said gently; "thank God that you are still
friends. But why did he not come with you to-day? You have told him about
me, I suppose?"

"Not yet, Marian; I have not been able to do that. Nor could he come with
me to-day. He has left England--on a false scent."

And then he told her, in a few words, the story of John Saltram's voyage
to New York; making very light of the matter, and speaking cheerily of
his early return.

"He will come back at once, of course, when he finds how he has been
deceived," Gilbert said.

Marian was cruelly distressed by this disappointment. She tried