now! But I know. Of course you have stabbed me with a
thousand daggers when you have told me from time to time of your love
for Violet. You have been very cruel,--needlessly cruel. Men are so
cruel! But for all that I have known that I could have kept you,--had
it not been too late when you spoke to me. Will you not own as much
as that?"

"Of course you would have been everything to me. I should never have
thought of Violet then."

"That is the only kind word you have said to me from that day to
this. I try to comfort myself in thinking that it would have been so.
But all that is past and gone, and done. I have had my romance and
you have had yours. As you are a man, it is natural that you should
have been disturbed by a double image;--it is not so with me."

"And yet you can advise me to offer marriage to a woman,--a woman
whom I am to seek merely because she is rich?"

"Yes;--I do so advise you. You have had your romance and must now
put up with reality. Why should I so advise you but for the interest
that I have in you? Your prosperity will do me no good. I shall not
even be here to see it. I shall hear of it only as so many a woman
banished out of England hears a distant misunderstood report of what
is going on in the country she has left. But I still have regard
enough,--I will be bold, and, knowing that you will not take it
amiss, will say love enough for you,--to feel a desire that you
should not be shipwrecked. Since we first took you in hand between
us, Barrington and I, I have never swerved in my anxiety on your
behalf. When I resolved that it would be better for us both that we
should be only friends, I did not swerve. When you would talk to me
so cruelly of your love for Violet, I did not swerve. When I warned
you from Loughlinter because I thought there was danger, I did not
swerve. When I bade you not to come to me in London because of my
husband, I did not swerve. When my father was hard upon you, I
did not swerve then. I would not leave him till he was softened.
When you tried to rob Oswald of his love, and I thought you would
succeed,--for I did think so,--I did not swerve. I have ever been
true to you. And now that I must hide myself and go away, and be seen
no more, I am true still."

"Laura,--dearest Laura!" he exclaimed.

"Ah, no!" she said, speaking with no touch of anger, but all in
sorrow;--"it must not be like that. There is no room for that. Nor do
you mean it. I do not think so ill of