ter running from her heavy dress, which clings about her slender
figure. She shrinks away from me a pace or two.

"Hush!" she cries, in a tone of mingled pain and dread--"hush!"

There was something so positive, so prohibitory in her voice and
gesture, that my heart contracted, and a sudden chill of despondency ran
through me. But I could not be silent now. It was impossible for me to
hold my peace, even at her bidding.

"Why do you say hush?" I asked, peremptorily. "I love you, Olivia. Is
there any reason why I should not love you?"

"Yes," she said, very slowly and with quivering lips. "I was married
four years ago, and my husband is living still!"

CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH.

A GLOOMY ENDING.

Olivia's answer struck me like an electric shock. For some moments I was
simply stunned, and knew neither what she had said, nor where we were.

I suppose half a minute had elapsed before I fairly received the meaning
of her words into my bewildered brain. It seemed as if they were
thundering in my ears, though she had uttered them in a low, frightened
voice. I scarcely understood them when I looked up and saw her leaning
against the rock, with her hands covering her face.

"Olivia!" I cried, stretching out my arms toward her, as though she
would flutter back to them and lay her head again where it had been
resting upon my shoulder, with her face against my neck.

But she did not see my gesture, and the next moment I knew that she
could never let me hold her in my arms again. I dared not even take one
step nearer to her.

"Olivia," I said again, after another minute or two of troubled silence,
with no sound but the thunders of the sea reverberating through the
perilous strait where we had almost confronted death together--"Olivia,
is it true?"

She bowed her head still lower upon her hands, in speechless
confirmation. A stricken, helpless, cowering child she seemed to me,
standing there in her drenched clothing. An unutterable tenderness,
altogether different from the feverish passion of a few minutes ago,
filled my heart as I looked at her.

"Come," I said, as calmly as I could speak, "I am at any rate your
doctor, and I am bound to take care of you. You must not stay here wet
and cold. Let us make haste back to Tardif's, Olivia."

I drew her hand down from her face and through my arm, for we had still
to re-enter the outer cave, and to return through a higher gallery,
before we could reach the cliffs abov