uated woman
that I was!" cried Corona.

"No, dear; you were not to blame. You were true, candid, natural through
it all. Our betrothal, dear, was on your part the betrothal of friends.
You did not know your own heart then. You went abroad with your
grandparents, and, after two years of travel, you were thrown in the
court circles of London, and exposed to all the splendors, temptations
and fascinations of rank, culture and refinement, such as you had never
met at home in your rural neighborhood. You were caught, dazzled,
bewildered. You thought you loved the English duke who sought your
hand--"

"But I never did, Rule. Oh, Heaven knows I never did. It was all
self-delusion," broke in Corona.

"No; you never did. I saw that in the first instant that I met your eyes
in the log cabin up yonder. You never did! It was a self-delusion. Yet
you were under the influence of that self-delusion when I found you on
our wedding evening in such a paroxysm of grief and despair that
I--astonished and amazed at what I saw--shared your delusion and
imagined that you loved this duke when you married me. What could I do,
my own dear Cora, for whom I would have lived or died at bidding--what
could I do but efface myself from your life?"

"Oh! you could have given me time--time to recover from my mental
illness, since I had done no evil willingly. Since I had kept my troth
as well as I could. Since I had vowed to love and serve you all the days
of my life. You should have given me time, Rule, to recover my senses
and keep my vow."

"Yes; I should have done so! But, you see, I did not know. How could I
know? Oh, my dear Cora! It cost me little to lay down all the honors I
had won, for they were worthless to me if not shared by you, for whom
they were won. But it cost my life almost to resign you. Mine was 'not
the flight of a felon' or a coward, but the retirement of one sick, sick
unto death of the world and of all the glory of the world. Some men in
my case might have sought relief in death, but I--I knew I must live
until the Lord of life should himself relieve me of duty. So I left the
city on the night of my wedding day, the night also before my
inauguration day."

"Oh, Rule! and as if it required that supreme act of renunciation to
tear the veil from my eyes and let me see you as you were, and see my
own heart as it was--from that hour I knew how much, how deeply, how
eternally I loved you!" said Corona.

Rothsay raised her ha