e the crowning glory of your life to repair a
dreadful wrong, and acknowledge before the world that the fame you had
aspersed was without stain or spot?"

"And with what grace should I ask the world to believe me? Is it when
expiating the shame of a falsehood that I should call upon men to accept
me as truthful? Have I not proclaimed her, from one end of Europe to the
other, dishonored? If _she_ be absolved, what becomes of _me?_"

"This is unworthy of you, Glencore," said Upton, severely; "nor, if
illness and long suffering had not impaired your judgment, had you ever
spoken such words. I say once more, that if the day came that you
could declare to the world that her fame had no other reproach than the
injustice of your own unfounded jealousy, that day would be the best and
the proudest of your life."

"The proud day that published me a calumniator of all that I was most
pledged to defend,--the deliberate liar against the obligation of the
holiest of all contracts! You forget, Upton,--but I do not forget,--that
it was by this very argument you once tried to dissuade me from my act
of vengeance. You told me--ay, in words that still ring in my ears--to
remember that if by any accident or chance her innocence might be
proven, I could never avail myself of the indication without first
declaring my own unworthiness to profit by it; that if the Wife stood
forth in all the pride of purity, the Husband would be a scoff and a
shame throughout the world!"

"When I said so," said Upton, "it was to turn you from a path that
could not but lead to ruin; I endeavored to deter you by an appeal that
interested even your selfishness."

"Your subtlety has outwitted itself, Upton," said Glencore, with a
bitter irony; "it is not the first instance on record where blank
cartridge has proved fatal!"

"One thing is perfectly clear," said Upton, boldly, "the man who shrinks
from the repair of a wrong he has done, on the consideration of how it
would affect himself and his own interests, shows that he cares more for
the outward show of honor than its real and sustaining power."

"And will you tell me, Upton, that the world's estimate of a man's fame
is not essential to his self-esteem, or that there yet lived one, who
would brave obloquy without, by the force of something within him?"

"This I will tell you," replied Upton, "that he who balances between the
two is scarcely an honest man, and that he who accepts the show for the
substa