“Yes, I have lied to you about her, I have hidden my treasure.  But it was for your sake, Gilbert; it was for the sake of our old friendship.  I could not hear to lose you; I could not bear to stand revealed before you as the weak wretch who betrayed your trust and stole your promised wife.  Yes, Gilbert, I have been guilty beyond all measure.  I have looked you in the face and told you lies.  I wanted to keep you for my friend; I could not stand the thought of a life-long breach between us.  Gilbert, old friend, have pity on me.  I was weak—­wicked, if you like—­but I loved you very dearly.”

He stretched out his bony hand with an appealing gesture, but it was not taken.  Gilbert sat with his head turned away, his face hidden from the sick man.

“Anything would have been better than the course you chose,” he said at last in a very quiet voice.  “If she loved you better than me—­than me, who would have thought it so small a thing to lay down my life for her happiness, or to stand aloof and keep the secret of my broken heart while I blest her as the cherished wife of another—­if you had certain reason to be sure she loved you, you should have asserted your right to claim her love like a man, and should have been prompt to tell me the bitter truth.  I am a man, and would have borne the blow as a man should bear it.  But to sneak into my place behind my back, to steal her away from me, to marry her under a false name—­a step that might go far to invalidate the marriage, by the way—­and then leave me to piece-out the broken story, syllable by syllable, to suffer all the torture of a prolonged suspense, all the wasted passion of anger and revenge against an imaginary enemy, to find at last that the man I had loved and trusted, honoured and admired beyond all other men throughout the best years of my life, was the man who had struck this secret blow—­it was the conduct of a villain and a coward, John Saltram.  I have no words to speak my contempt for so base a betrayal.  And when I remember your pretended sympathy, your friendly counsel—­O God! it was the work of a social Judas; nothing was wanted but the kiss.”

“Yes,” the other answered with a faint bitter laugh; “it was very bad.  Once having began, you see, it was but to add one lie to another.  Anything seemed better than to tell you the truth.  I fancied your devotion for Marian would wear itself out much sooner than it did—­that you would marry some one else; and then I thought, when you were happy, and had forgotten that old fancy, I would have confessed the truth, and told you it was your friend who was your rival.  It might have seemed easy to you to forgive me under those happier circumstances, and so our old friendship might never have been broken.  I waited for that, Gilbert.  Don’t suppose that it was not painful to me to act so base a part; don’t suppose that I did not suffer.  I did—­in a hundred ways.  You have seen the traces of that slow torture in my face.  In every way I had sinned from my weak desire to win my love and yet keep my friend; and God knows the burden of my sin has been heavy upon me.  I will tell you some day—­if ever I am strong enough for so many words, and if you will hear me out patiently—­the whole story of my temptation; how I struggled against it, and only gave way at last when life seemed insupportable to me without the woman I loved.”