e us all," said
Warrender sternly, for various members of the bridal party had straggled
out, and were listening from the vestry door. He took her by the arm and
led her into the room. "What is your relation to that man?" he said,
keeping his hand upon her arm.

The wedding guests made a circle round, the clergyman in his white
surplice among the ladies' gay dresses, the white figure of Chatty
leaning with her hand on the table, her mother's anxious face close
behind her. Poor Dick in his spruce wedding clothes, with his ghostly
face, stood drawing back a little, staring with eyes that seemed to sink
deeper in their sockets as he gazed. He had never looked upon that face
since he parted with her in utter disgust and misery six years before.
She came in, almost forced into the inclosure of all those fine people
gazing at her, with all her meretricious graces, not an imposing sinner,
a creature ready to cry and falter, yet trying to set up against the
stare of the ladies the piteous impudence of her kind.

"What are you to that man?" Theo asked.

"Oh,--what should I be to him? a gentleman doesn't ask such questions.
I--I--have been the same to him as I've been--you know well enough," she
added, with a horrible little laugh that echoed all about, and made a
stir among the people round.

"Are you his wife?"

She shuddered, and began to cry. "I--I'm nobody's wife. I've been--a
number of things. I like my freedom--I----" She stopped hysterical,
overcome by the extraordinary circumstances, and the audience which
listened and looked at her with hungry ears and eyes.

Dick put out his arms as if to wave the crowd away. What were all these
spectators doing here, looking on at his agony? He spoke in a hoarse and
husky voice. "Why did you deceive me? why did you pretend you were dead,
and lead me to this?"

"Because I've nothing to do with you, and I don't want nothing to do
with you," she cried; "because I've been dead to you these long years;
because I'm not a bad, cruel woman. I wanted to leave you free. He's
free for me," she said, turning to Warrender. "It's not I that wants to
bind him. If I made believe it was me that died, where was the wrong? I
wanted to set him free. That's not deceiving him, it was for his good,
that he might feel he was free."

"Answer, woman. Are you his wife?"

"What right have you to call me a woman? His wife? How can you tell
whether I wasn't married before ever I set eyes upon him?" she