ation of
the first act, and shrank from the reflection of it in the disaster
which had fallen on my friend and myself.

"What has frightened you?" Susan repeated.

I answered in one word--I whispered his name: "Rothsay!"

She looked at me in innocent surprise. "Has he met with some
misfortune?" she asked, quietly.

"Misfortune"--did she call it? Had I not said enough to disturb her
tranquillity in mentioning Rothsay's name? "I am living!" I said.
"Living--and likely to live!"

Her answer expressed fervent gratitude. "Thank God for it!"

I looked at her, astonished as she had been astonished when she looked
at me.

"Susan, Susan," I cried--"must I own it? I love you!"

She came nearer to me with timid pleasure in her eyes--with the first
faint light of a smile playing round her lips.

"You say it very strangely," she murmured. "Surely, my dear one,
you ought to love me? Since the first day when you gave me my French
lesson--haven't I loved You?"

"You love _me?_" I repeated. "Have you read--?" My voice failed me; I
could say no more.

She turned pale. "Read what?" she asked.

"My letter."

"What letter?"

"The letter I wrote to you before we were married."

Am I a coward? The bare recollection of what followed that reply makes
me tremble. Time has passed. I am a new man now; my health is restored;
my happiness is assured: I ought to be able to write on. No: it is
not to be done. How can I think coolly? how force myself to record the
suffering that I innocently, most innocently, inflicted on the sweetest
and truest of women? Nothing saved us from a parting as absolute as the
parting that follows death but the confession that had been wrung from
me at a time when my motive spoke for itself. The artless avowal of her
affection had been justified, had been honored, by the words which laid
my heart at her feet when I said "I love you."

*****

She had risen to leave me. In a last look, we had silently resigned
ourselves to wait, apart from each other, for the day of reckoning that
must follow Rothsay's return, when we heard the sound of carriage-wheels
on the drive that led to the house. In a minute more the man himself
entered the room.

He looked first at Susan--then at me. In both of us he saw the traces
that told of agitation endured, but not yet composed. Worn and weary he
waited, hesitating, near the door.

"Am I intruding?" he asked.

"We were thinking of you, and speaking of you," I repli