“You love her very much?” said the quiet voice at my side, not much louder than the voice of conscience, which was speaking imperiously just then.

“I esteem her more highly than any other woman, except my mother,” I said.  “I believe she would die sooner than do any thing she considered wrong.  I do not deserve her, and she loves me, I am sure, very truly and faithfully.”

“Do you think she will like me?” asked Olivia, anxiously.

“No; she must love you,” I said, with warmth; “and I, too, can be a more useful friend to you after my marriage than I am now.  Perhaps then you will feel free to place perfect confidence in us.”

She smiled faintly, without speaking—­a smile which said plainly she could keep her own secret closely.  It provoked me to do a thing I had had no intention of doing, and which I regretted very much afterward.  I opened my pocket-book, and drew out the little slip of paper containing the advertisement.

“Read that,” I said.

But I do not think she saw more than the first line, for her face went deadly white, and her eyes turned upon me with a wild, beseeching look—­as Tardif described it, the look of a creature hunted and terrified.  I thought she would have fallen, and I put my arm round her.  She fastened both her hands about mine, and her lips moved, though I could not catch a word she was saying.

“Olivia!” I cried, “Olivia! do you suppose I could do any thing to hurt you?  Do not be so frightened!  Why, I am your friend truly.  I wish to Heaven I had not shown you the thing.  Have more faith in me, and more courage.”

“But they will find me, and force me away from here,” she muttered.

“No,” I said; “that advertisement was printed in the Times directly after your flight last October.  They have not found you out yet; and the longer you are hidden, the less likely they are to find you.  Good Heavens! what a fool I was to show it to you!”

“Never mind,” she answered, recovering herself a little, but still clinging to my arm; “I was only frightened for the time.  You would not give me up to them if you knew all.”

“Give you up to them!” I repeated, bitterly.  “Am I a Judas?”

But she could not talk to me any more.  She was trembling like an aspen-leaf, and her breath came sobbingly.  All I could do was to take her home, blaming myself for my cursed folly.

Captain Carey and Tardif met us at the farm-yard gate, but Olivia could not speak to them; and we passed them in silence, challenged by their inquisitive looks.  She could only bid me good-by in a tremulous voice; and I watched her go on into her own little room, and close the door between us.  That was the last I should see of her before my marriage.

Tardif walked with us to the top of the cliff, and made me a formal, congratulatory speech before quitting us.  When he was gone, Captain Carey stood still until he was quite out of hearing, and then stretched out his hand toward the thatched roof, yellow with stone-crop and lichens.