come back you'll know that
everything has been settled satisfactorily. You'll be happy yet. I'm
sure you will. Ah, what did I say about the mysterious power of that
solemn and sacred sacrament? Good-bye!"

I meant what I had said. I meant to do what I had promised. God knows I
did. But does a woman ever know her own heart? Or is heaven alone the
judge of it?

At four o'clock that afternoon my husband left Ellan for England. I went
with him.

FORTIETH CHAPTER

Having made my bargain I set myself to fulfil the conditions of it. I
had faithfully promised to try to love my husband and I prepared to do
so.

Did not love require that a wife should look up to and respect and even
reverence the man she had married? I made up my mind to do that by
shutting my eyes to my husband's obvious faults and seeing only his
better qualities.

What disappointments were in store for me! What crushing and humiliating
disillusionments!

On the night of our arrival in London we put up at a fashionable hotel
in a quiet but well-known part of the West-end, which is inhabited
chiefly by consulting physicians and celebrated surgeons. Here, to my
surprise, we were immediately discovered, and lines of visitors waited
upon my husband the following morning.

I thought they were his friends, and a ridiculous little spurt of pride
came to me from heaven knows where with the idea that my husband must be
a man of some importance in the metropolis.

But I discovered they were his creditors, money-lenders and bookmakers,
to whom he owed debts of "honour" which he had been unable or unwilling
to disclose to my father and his advocate.

One of my husband's visitors was a pertinacious little man who came
early and stayed late. He was a solicitor, and my husband was obviously
in some fear of him. The interviews between them, while they were
closeted together morning after morning in one of our two sitting-rooms,
were long and apparently unpleasant, for more than once I caught the
sound of angry words on both sides, with oaths and heavy blows upon the
table.

But towards the end of the week, my husband's lawyer arrived in London,
and after that the conversations became more pacific.

One morning, as I sat writing a letter in the adjoining room, I heard
laughter, the popping of corks, the jingling of glasses, and the
drinking of healths, and I judged that the, difficult and disagreeable
business had been concluded.

At the close of the