with mademoiselle: he did not know where we went. At
this time I was engaged to Erastus Pronando. In August of the next
summer I went to West Virginia to assist in the hospitals for a short
time. Here, unexpectedly, I heard of him lying ill at a farm-house in
the neighborhood; I did not even know that he was in the army. I went
across the mountain to see if he were in good hands, and found him very
ill; he did not know me. When the fever subsided, there were a few
hours--during which there was a--deception, followed by a confession of
the same, and separation. He was to go back to his wife, and he did go
back to her. It was because I believed that he had so fully gone back to
her--or rather that he had never left her, I having been but a passing
fancy--that I told Helen all. She suspected something; it was better
that she should know the whole--should know how short-lived had been his
interest in me, his forgetfulness of her. But instead of making this
impression upon her, it roused in her a passion of excitement. It was
then that she exclaimed: 'You have robbed me of his love; I will never
forgive you'--the second sentence overheard by that listening spy.

"'Helen,' I answered, 'he did not love me. Do you not see that? _I_ am
the one humiliated. When I saw you with him at St. Lucien's Church, I
knew that he loved you--probably had never loved any one save you.'

"I believed what I said. But this is what she answered: 'It is not true.
Since he saw you he has never loved me. I see it now. He married me from
pity, no doubt thinking that I was near death. How many times he must
have wished me dead indeed! I wonder that he has not murdered me.'

"This, also, Bagshot heard, for Helen had risen to her feet, and spoke
in a high, strained voice, unlike her own. I put my arms round her and
drew her down again. She struggled, but I would not let her go.

"'Helen,' I said, 'you are beside yourself. You were his wife, and you
were happy. That one look I had in church showed me that you were.'

"She relapsed into stillness. After a while she looked up, and said,
quietly, 'It is a good thing he is dead.'

"'Hush!' I answered; 'you do not know what you are saying.'

"'Yes, I do. It is a good thing that he is dead,' she repeated; 'for I
should have found it out, and made his life a torment. And I should
never have died; it would have determined me never to die. I should have
lived on forever, an old, old woman, close to him always