forgive me!"

He knelt before her humbly as a child, he bowed his handsome head until
his face rested on her knees; he sobbed aloud in his sorrow and his deep
regret. She stood for a few minutes quite uncertain; her clear reason
and common sense told her that it would be better if she would refuse
him pardon, and that they should part for all time; but love and pity
pleaded, and of course love and pity won. She laid her hand on the dark
head of the man whom she had once believed her husband; her beautiful
face quivered with emotion.

"I forgive you," she said, "freely, frankly, fully, as I hope Heaven
will forgive me all my sins. Nay, you must not kiss me, not even my
hand. Your kisses belong to some one else now--not to me. I forgive you,
but we must part again. Come what may--we must part, we must not meet
again."

"I can never part with you," he said, in a hoarse voice. "You have been
life of my life, heart of my heart too long for that."

She held up her hand with a superb gesture of warning and silence.

"Hush, Lord Chandos," she said; "if you speak to me in that strain, I
shall never see you again. Remember you have a wife; you must not be
false to two women--keep true to one. Neither your kisses nor your
loving words belong to me now."

"I will not offend you," he said, sadly.

She leaned her beautiful arms on the table, her white hands under her
chin, looking steadily at him.

"I have forgiven you," she said, musingly, "I, who have sworn such
terrible oaths, such bitter revenge, I have ended by forgiving you,
after the fashion of the most milk-and-water type of women. I have
forgiven you, and Heaven knows how I tried to hate you, and have tried
to take pleasure in the thoughts of my vengeance."

"You have had your vengeance on me, Leone, in the shape of the love that
has never left me, and the memories which have haunted me. You swore
vengeance against my mother, but you will forego that."

A slow smile came over her face and died away again.

"Lord Chandos," she said, "you will not be my debtor in generosity. You
have asked me to pardon you; I have done so. Grant me one favor in
return--tell me who influenced you to forsake me?"

He looked puzzled.

"I hardly know, Leone, I can hardly tell you."

"It was not the lady whom you have married," she continued, "of that I
am sure. Who was it?"

"I think if any one influenced me it must have been my mother," he said,
gently; "she was always violentl