I
could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be
released from the promise he had wrung from me that night at the garden
gate.

His rage was terrible to witness. He saw at once that my heart was given
to someone else, and guessed who it must be; for, of course, everybody
knew about our visitor from the clouds. He refused to release me from my
pledge to him, and uttered such wild threats against poor Phillip, whom
he had not seen, and who, indeed, had not spoken of love to me at that
time, that it precipitated my union with his rival. One insult that he
was base enough to level at Phillip and me stung me so deeply, that I
went at once to Mr. Rutley and told him how it was possible for evil
minds to misconstrue his continuing to reside at the farm.

When I next met Kenneth Moore I was leaving the registrar's office upon
the arm of my husband. Kenneth did not know what had happened, but when
he saw us walking openly together, his face assumed an expression of
such intense malignity, that a great fear for Phillip came like a chill
upon my heart, and when we were alone together under the roof that might
henceforth harmlessly cover us both, I had but one thought, one intense
desire--to quit it for ever in secret with the man I loved, and leave no
foot-print behind for our enemy to track us by.

It was now that Phillip told me that he possessed an independent
fortune, by virtue of which the world lay spread out before us for our
choice of a home.

"Sweet as have been the hours that I have passed here--precious and
hallowed as this little spot on the wide earth's surface must ever be to
me," said my husband, "I want to take you away from it and show you many
goodly things you have as yet hardly dreamed of. We will not abandon
your dear old home, but we will find someone to take care of it for us,
and see what other paradise we can discover in which to spend our
life-long honeymoon."

I had never mentioned to Phillip the name of Kenneth Moore, and so he
thought it a mere playful caprice that made me say:--

"Let us go, Phillip, no one knows where--not even ourselves. Let Heaven
guide us in our choice of a resting-place. Let us vanish from this
village as if we had never lived in it. Let us go and be forgotten."

He looked at me in astonishment, and replied in a joking way:--

"The only means I know of to carry out your wishes to the letter, would
be a nocturnal departure, as I arrived--that is to say,