ney to hunt you down; I have done this, I who love you. No, don't
draw your arms away. I have done this. It was before I knew. Oh, I have
suffered! God! how I have suffered! It has been an agony to me. You will
forgive me! I will not let you go unless you forgive me."

He looked down at her in silence. His cheeks were pale and his eyes were
grave. Yet there was no anger.

"I will forgive you, Helen," he whispered--"nay, there is nothing to
forgive. Only tell me this: you do not doubt me now?"

"Never again!" she cried passionately. "God forgive me that I have ever
doubted you! It is like a horrible dream to me; but it lies far behind,
and the morning has come."

He kissed her once more and opened his arms. With a low happy laugh she
shook her tumbled hair straight, and hand in hand they walked slowly
away.

"You have been long gone," she whispered reproachfully.

He sighed as he answered her. How long might not his next absence be!

"It has seemed as long to me as to you, sweetheart," he said. "Every
moment away from you I have counted as a lost moment in my life."

"That is very pretty," she answered. "And now you are here, are you
going to stay?"

"Until the end," he said solemnly. "You know, Helen, that I am in deadly
peril. The means of averting it which I went abroad to seek, I could not
use."

She thought of those letters, bought and safely burnt, and she pressed
his fingers. She would tell him of them presently.

"They shall not take you from me, Bernard, now," she said softly. "Kiss
me again, dear."

He stooped and took her happy upturned face with its crown of wavy
golden hair between his hands, looking fondly down at her. The thought
of all that he might so soon lose swept in upon him with a sickening
agony, and he turned away with trembling lips and dim eyes.

"God grant that they may not!" he cried passionately. "If it were to
come now, how could I bear it to the end?"

They walked on in silence. Then she who had, or thought she had, so much
more reason to be hopeful than he, dashed the tears away from her eyes,
and talked hopefully. They would not dare to lay a finger upon Bernard
Maddison, whatever they might have done to poor Mr. Brown. His great
name would protect him from suspicion. And as he listened to her he had
not the heart to tell her of the men who had followed him abroad, that
he was even then doubtless under surveillance. He let her talk on, and
feigned to share her hopefulness