stence you lead in
Algeria must be very terrible to you, though it is greater, in truth,
than your old years of indolence."

He sank down beside her on a low seat, and bowed his head on his hands
for some moments. He knew that he must leave this woman whom he loved,
and who knew him now as one whom in her childhood she had seen caressed
and welcomed by all her race, to hold him guilty of this wretched, mean,
and fraudulent thing, under whose charge he had quitted her country.
Great dews of intense pain gathered on his forehead; his whole mind, and
heart, and soul revolted against this brand of a guilt not his own that
was stamped on him; he could have cried out to her the truth in all the
eloquence of a breaking heart.

But he knew that his lips had been sealed by his own choice forever; and
the old habits of his early life were strong upon him still. He lifted
his head and spoke gently, and very quietly, though she caught the
tremor that shook through the words.

"Do not let us speak of myself. You see what my life is; there is no
more to be said. Tell me rather of your own story--you are no longer the
Lady Venetia? You have been wedded and widowed, they say?"

"The wife of an hour--yes! But it is of yourself that I would hear.
Why have left the world, and, above all, why have left us, to think you
dead? I was not so young when we last saw you, but that I remember well
how all my people loved you."

Had she been kept in ignorance of the accusation beneath which his
flight had been made? He began to think so. It was possible. She had
been so young a child when he had left for Africa; then the story was
probably withheld from reaching her; and now, what memory had the world
to give a man whose requiem it had said twelve long years before? In all
likelihood she had never heard his name, save from her brother's lips,
that had been silent on the shame of his old comrade.

"Leave my life alone, for God's sake!" he said passionately. "Tell me of
your own--tell me, above all, of his. He loved me, you say?--O Heaven!
he did! Better than any creature that ever breathed; save the man whose
grave lies yonder."

"He does so still," she answered eagerly. "Philip's is not a heart that
forgets. It is a heart of gold, and the name of his earliest friend is
graven on it as deeply now as ever. He thinks you dead; to-night will be
the happiest hour he had ever known when he shall meet you here."

He rose hastily, and moved thrice