en features, gray complexion, upturned
eyes, and parted lips of the once beautiful girl.

"Hannah, how is this--dying?" he whispered huskily.

"Dying," replied the woman solemnly.

"So best," he whispered, in a choking voice.

"So best," she echoed, as she drew away to the distant window. "So best,
as death is better than dishonor. But you! Oh, you villain! oh, you
heartless, shameless villain! to pass yourself off for a single man and
win her love and deceive her with a false marriage!"

"Hannah! hear me!" cried the young man, in a voice of anguish.

"Dog! ask the judge and jury to hear you when you are brought to trial
for your crime! For do you think that I am a-going to let that girl go
down to her grave in undeserved reproach? No, you wretch! not to save
from ruin you and your fine sisters and high mother, and all your proud,
shameful race! No, you devil! if there is law in the land, you shall be
dragged to jail like a thief and exposed in court to answer for your
bigamy; and all the world shall hear that you are a felon and she an
honest girl who thought herself your wife when she gave you her love!"

"Hannah, Hannah, prosecute, expose me if you like! I am so miserable
that I care not what becomes of me or mine. The earth is crumbling under
my feet! do you think I care for trifles? Denounce, but hear me! Heaven
knows I did not willingly deceive poor Nora! I was myself deceived! If
she believed herself to be my wife, I as fully believed myself to be her
husband."

"You lie!" exclaimed this rude child of nature, who knew no fine word
for falsehood.

"Oh, it is natural you should rail at me! But, Hannah, my sharp, sharp
grief makes me insensible to mere stinging words. Yet if you would let
me, I could tell you the combination of circumstances that deceived us
both!" replied Herman, with the patience of one who, having suffered the
extreme power of torture, could feel no new wound.

"Tell me, then!" snapped Hannah harshly and incredulously.

He leaned against the window-frame and whispered:

"I shall not survive Nora long; I feel that I shall not; I have not
taken food or drink, or rested under a roof, since I heard that news,
Hannah. Well, to explain--I was very young when I first met her---"

"Met who?" savagely demanded Hannah.

"My first wife. She was the only child and heiress of a retired
Jew-tradesman. Her beauty fascinated an imbecile old nobleman, who,
having insulted the daughter with 'libera