on. To complete the misfortune, she was
already expecting another infant. She would have killed herself, but her
religion and the love of her children forbade it. Kneeling before her
child's cradle, she entreated pardon from the father of the one for the
father of the other. She would not bring herself to proclaim aloud their
infamy.

"Oh!" she said, "thou whom I loved, thou who art no more, thou knowest
no guilty thought ever entered my mind! When I saw this man, I thought I
beheld thee; when I was happy, I thought I owed it to thee; it was thee
whom I loved in him. Surely thou dost not desire that by a public avowal
I should bring shame and disgrace on these children and on myself."

She rose calm and strengthened: it seemed as if a heavenly inspiration
had marked out her duty. To suffer in silence, such was the course she
adopted,--a life of sacrifice and self-denial which she offered to God
as an expiation for her involuntary sin. But who can understand the
workings of the human heart? This man whom she ought to have loathed,
this man who had made her an innocent partner in his crime, this
unmasked impostor whom she should have beheld only with disgust,
she-loved him! The force of habit, the ascendancy he had obtained over
her, the love he had shown her, a thousand sympathies felt in her inmost
heart, all these had so much influence, that, instead of accusing and
cursing him, she sought to excuse him on the plea of a passion to which,
doubtless, he had yielded when usurping the name and place of another.
She feared punishment for him yet more than disgrace for herself, and
though resolved to no longer allow him the rights purchased by crime,
she yet trembled at the idea of losing his love. It was this above
all which decided her to keep eternal silence about her discovery; one
single word which proved that his imposture was known would raise an
insurmountable barrier between them.

To conceal her trouble entirely was, however, beyond her power; her eyes
frequently showed traces of her secret tears. Martin several times asked
the cause of her sorrow; she tried to smile and excuse herself, only
immediately sinking back into her gloomy thoughts. Martin thought it
mere caprice; he observed her loss of colour, her hollow cheeks, and
concluded that age was impairing her beauty, and became less attentive
to her. His absences became longer and more frequent, and he did not
conceal his impatience and annoyance at being wat