lda watched him
narrowly out of the corner of her eye, wondering why he looked so
unusually angry.

They were barely in time to catch the train, and it was not until they
were seated in their own compartment that Varrick ventured a remark to
the beautiful girl he had just made his wife, and who was looking up
into his face with such puzzled wonder in her great dark eyes.

"I should like your attention for a few moments, Mrs. Varrick," he said,
turning to her with a haughty sternness that was new to him.

"You are my wife," he went on; "the ceremony is barely over which made
you that, yet I would recall it if I could."

"What do you mean, Hubert?" she cried, piteously.

"We will not have any theatricals, if you please," he said, waving her
back. "A guilty conscience should need no accuser. It is best to speak
plainly to you, and to the point. Suffice it to say I was in the
conservatory at the time you entered. I heard all that passed between
Captain Frazier and yourself. Now, here is what I propose to do: We were
to take a wedding-trip to Montreal. We will go there, but when we reach
our destination, you and I will part forever. I shall institute
proceedings for a divorce at once, and I shall never know another happy
moment until the divorce is granted. You shall be wife of mine but in
name until we reach Montreal; then we part forever."

"Oh, Hubert, Hubert, you will not do this!" she sobbed, wildly. "It
would ruin my life--kill me!"

"You did not stop to think that marriage with you would ruin my life,"
he interposed, bitterly. "What have you to say for yourself? Was
Captain Frazier's story false or true? Remember, I heard him say that he
could furnish proof of all he charged."

"It is useless to hide the truth from you," she whispered, hoarsely. "I
see that you know all. Give me a chance to think--only to think of some
way out of it. It would kill me, Hubert, to part from you. Better death
than that. You are my world, the sunshine of my life. I would pine away
and die without you. Oh, Hubert, you must not leave me!"

"The words are easily said," he replied, "but they do not sound sincere.
I may as well make a clean breast of the whole matter," he went on, "and
tell you the truth, Gerelda. I do not love you. I-- I--love another,
though that love has never been confessed to the one I love. I--
I--married you because I felt in honor bound to do so, and in doing so I
crushed all the love that was budding in my h