aunt asked me to
tell you this; of course I can do no more.'

Wilfrid made no reply, and Mr. Athel left him.

It was an hour of terrible suffering that Wilfrid lived through before
he left the study and went to lay his head on the pillow. He had not
thought very much of Beatrice hitherto; the passion which had spurred
him blindly on made him forgetful of everything but the end his heart
desired. Now that the end was within reach, he could consider what it
was that he had done. He was acting like a very madman. He could not
hope that any soul would regard his frenzy even with compassion; on all
sides he would meet with the sternest condemnation. Who would recognise
his wife? This step which he was taking meant rupture with all his
relatives, perchance with all his friends; for it would be universally
declared that he had been guilty of utter baseness. His career was
ruined. It might happen that he would have to leave England with Emily,
abandoning for her sake everything else that he prized.

How would Beatrice bear the revelation? Mere suspense had made her ill;
such a blow as this might kill her. Never before had he been consciously
guilty of an act of cruelty or of wrong to any the least valued of those
with whom he had dealt; to realise what his treachery meant to Beatrice
was so terrible that he dared not fix his thought upon it. Her love for
him was intense beyond anything he had imagined in woman; Emily had
never seemed to him possessed with so vehement a passion. Indeed he had
often doubted whether Emily's was a passionate nature; at times she was
almost cold--appeared so, in his thought of her--and never had she
given way to that self-forgetful ardour which was so common in Beatrice.
Sweat broke out upon his forehead as he saw the tragic issues to which
his life was tending. There was no retreat, save by a second act of
apostasy so unspeakably shameful that the brand of it would drive him to
self-destruction. He had made his choice, or had been driven upon it by
the powers which ruled his destiny; it only remained to have the courage
of his resolve and to defy consequences. At least it was in no less a
cause than that of his life's one love. There was no stamp of turpitude
on the end for which he would sacrifice so much and occasion so much
misery.

He passed the time in his own rooms till the afternoon of the following
day; then, at the customary hour, he set forth to visit Beatrice. Would
she see him? In h