et, come back and comfort me. What else had I to look to
for consolation? If we had been together you would have helped me to
better things. I know it was wrong, darling, but tell me if I was
wrong without any excuse."

I was obliged to turn my face from her. "Don't ask me!" I said. "Have
I suffered as you have suffered? What right have I to decide?"

"I used to think of him," she pursued, dropping her voice and moving
closer to me, "I used to think of him when Percival left me alone at
night to go among the Opera people. I used to fancy what I might have
been if it had pleased God to bless me with poverty, and if I had been
his wife. I used to see myself in my neat cheap gown, sitting at home
and waiting for him while he was earning our bread--sitting at home and
working for him and loving him all the better because I had to work for
him--seeing him come in tired and taking off his hat and coat for him,
and, Marian, pleasing him with little dishes at dinner that I had
learnt to make for his sake. Oh! I hope he is never lonely enough and
sad enough to think of me and see me as I have thought of HIM and see
HIM!"

As she said those melancholy words, all the lost tenderness returned to
her voice, and all the lost beauty trembled back into her face. Her
eyes rested as lovingly on the blighted, solitary, ill-omened view
before us, as if they saw the friendly hills of Cumberland in the dim
and threatening sky.

"Don't speak of Walter any more," I said, as soon as I could control
myself. "Oh, Laura, spare us both the wretchedness of talking of him
now!"

She roused herself, and looked at me tenderly.

"I would rather be silent about him for ever," she answered, "than
cause you a moment's pain."

"It is in your interests," I pleaded; "it is for your sake that I
speak. If your husband heard you----"

"It would not surprise him if he did hear me."

She made that strange reply with a weary calmness and coldness. The
change in her manner, when she gave the answer, startled me almost as
much as the answer itself.

"Not surprise him!" I repeated. "Laura! remember what you are
saying--you frighten me!"

"It is true," she said; "it is what I wanted to tell you to-day, when
we were talking in your room. My only secret when I opened my heart to
him at Limmeridge was a harmless secret, Marian--you said so yourself.
The name was all I kept from him, and he has discovered it."

I heard her, but I could say nothin