ife. But I believed it. Then I went back to
St. Louis,--and we were married."

"You thought there was no obstacle but what you might become man and wife
legally?"

"I thought she was a widow."

"There was no further delay?"

"Very little. Why should there have been delay?"

"I only ask."

"She had suffered enough, and I had waited long enough."

"She owed you a great deal," said the Doctor.

"It was not a case of owing," said Mr. Peacocke. "At least I think not.
I think she had learnt to love me as I had learnt to love her."

"And how did it go with you then?"

"Very well,--for some months. There was nothing to mar our
happiness,--till one day he came and made his way into our presence."

"The husband?"

"Yes; the husband, Ferdinand Lefroy, the elder brother;--he of whom I had
been told that he was dead; he was there standing before us, talking to
us,--half drunk, but still well knowing what he was doing."

"Why had he come?"

"In want of money, I suppose,--as this other one has come here."

"Did he ask for money?"

"I do not think he did then, though he spoke of his poor condition. But
on the next day he went away. We heard that he had taken the steamer down
the river for New Orleans. We have never heard more of him from that day
to this."

"Can you imagine what caused conduct such as that?"

"I think money was given to him that night to go; but if so, I do not know
by whom. I gave him none. During the next day or two I found that many
in St. Louis knew that he had been there."

"They knew then that you----"

"They knew that my wife was not my wife. That is what you mean to ask?"
The Doctor nodded his head. "Yes, they knew that."

"And what then?"

"Word was brought to me that she and I must part if I chose to keep my
place at the College."

"That you must disown her?"

"The President told me that it would be better that she should go
elsewhere. How could I send her from me?"

"No, indeed;--but as to the facts?"

"You know them all pretty well now. I could not send her from me. Nor
could I go and leave her. Had we been separated then, because of the law
or because of religion, the burden, the misery, the desolation, would all
have been upon her."

"I would have clung to her, let the law say what it might," said the
Doctor, rising from his chair.

"You would?"

"I would;--and I think that I could have reconciled it to my God. But I
might have been wrong," he added