houlders.' Whenever he is angry
with me now he refers to what I acknowledged to him in your presence
with a sneer or a threat. I have no power to prevent him from putting
his own horrible construction on the confidence I placed in him. I
have no influence to make him believe me, or to keep him silent. You
looked surprised to-day when you heard him tell me that I had made a
virtue of necessity in marrying him. You will not be surprised again
when you hear him repeat it, the next time he is out of temper----Oh,
Marian! don't! don't! you hurt me!"

I had caught her in my arms, and the sting and torment of my remorse
had closed them round her like a vice. Yes! my remorse. The white
despair of Walter's face, when my cruel words struck him to the heart
in the summer-house at Limmeridge, rose before me in mute, unendurable
reproach. My hand had pointed the way which led the man my sister
loved, step by step, far from his country and his friends. Between
those two young hearts I had stood, to sunder them for ever, the one
from the other, and his life and her life lay wasted before me alike in
witness of the deed. I had done this, and done it for Sir Percival
Glyde.

For Sir Percival Glyde.

I heard her speaking, and I knew by the tone of her voice that she was
comforting me--I, who deserved nothing but the reproach of her silence!
How long it was before I mastered the absorbing misery of my own
thoughts, I cannot tell. I was first conscious that she was kissing
me, and then my eyes seemed to wake on a sudden to their sense of
outward things, and I knew that I was looking mechanically straight
before me at the prospect of the lake.

"It is late," I heard her whisper. "It will be dark in the
plantation." She shook my arm and repeated, "Marian! it will be dark in
the plantation."

"Give me a minute longer," I said--"a minute, to get better in."

I was afraid to trust myself to look at her yet, and I kept my eyes
fixed on the view.

It WAS late. The dense brown line of trees in the sky had faded in the
gathering darkness to the faint resemblance of a long wreath of smoke.
The mist over the lake below had stealthily enlarged, and advanced on
us. The silence was as breathless as ever, but the horror of it had
gone, and the solemn mystery of its stillness was all that remained.

"We are far from the house," she whispered. "Let us go back."

She stopped suddenly, and turned her face from me towards the entranc