rty of Englishmen he had
gone up into the interior of a Central American country to visit some
famous ruins. He sent her photographs of them, and of the Englishmen, and
of himself. Yes, he had seen the newspapers. If she had not seen them,
she was not to read them if they came to her. And if she had, she was to
remember that their love was too sacred to be soiled, and too perfect to
be troubled. As for himself, as she knew, he was a changed man, who
thought of his former life with loathing. She had made him clean, and
filled him with a new strength.

The winter passed. The last snow melted on the little grass plot, which
changed by patches from brown to emerald green; and the children ran over
it again, and tracked it in the soft places, but Honora only smiled.
Warm, still days were interspersed between the windy ones, when the sky
was turquoise blue, when the very river banks were steeped in new
colours, when the distant, shadowy mountains became real. Liberty ran
riot within her. If he thought with loathing on his former life, so did
she. Only a year ago she had been penned up in a New York street in that
prison-house of her own making, hemmed in by surroundings which she had
now learned to detest from her soul.

A few more penalties remained to be paid, and the heaviest of these was
her letter to her aunt and uncle. Even as they had accepted other things
in life, so had they accepted the hardest of all to bear--Honora's
divorce. A memorable letter her Uncle Tom had written her after Peter's
return to tell them that remonstrances were useless! She was their
daughter in all but name, and they would not forsake her. When she should
have obtained her divorce, she should go back to them. Their house, which
had been her home, should always remain so. Honora wept and pondered long
over that letter. Should she write and tell them the truth, as she had
told Peter? It was not because she was ashamed of the truth that she had
kept it from them throughout the winter: it was because she wished to
spare them as long as possible. Cruellest circumstance of all, that a
love so divine as hers should not be understood by them, and should cause
them infinite pain!

The weeks and months slipped by. Their letters, after that first one,
were such as she had always received from them: accounts of the weather,
and of the doings of her friends at home. But now the time was at hand
when she must prepare them for her marriage with Chiltern; f