“I cannot tell what it is,” I answered.  “Everything she does and says has a charm for me that I could never describe.  With her for my wife I should be more happy than I ever was; with any one else I shall be wretched.  That is all I know.”

I had left my seat by Johanna, and was pacing to and fro in the room, too restless and miserable to keep still.  The low moan of the sea sighed all about the house.  I could have cast myself on the floor had I been alone, and wept and sobbed like a woman.  I could see no loop-hole of escape from the mesh of circumstances which caught me in their net.

A long, dreary, colorless, wretched life stretched before me, with Julia my inseparable companion, and Olivia altogether lost to me.  Captain Carey and Johanna, neither of whom had tasted the sweets and bitters of marriage, looked sorrowfully at me and shook their heads.

“You must tell Julia,” said Johanna, after a long pause.

“Tell Julia!” I echoed.  “I would not tell her for worlds!”

“You must tell her,” she repeated; “it is your clear duty.  I know it will be most painful to you both, but you have no right to marry her with this secret on your mind.”

“I should be true to her,” I interrupted, somewhat angrily.

“What do you call being true, Martin Dobree?” she asked, more calmly than she had spoken before.  “Is it being true to a woman to let her believe you choose and love her above all other women when that is absolutely false?  No; you are too honorable for that.  I tell you it is your plain duty to let Julia know this, and know it at once.”

“It will break her heart,” I said, with a sharp twinge of conscience and a cowardly shrinking from the unpleasant duty urged upon me.

“It will not break Julia’s heart,” said Johanna, very sadly; “it may break your mother’s.”

I reeled as if a sharp blow had struck me.  I had been thinking far less of my mother than of Julia; but I saw, as with a flash of lightning, what a complete uprooting of all her old habits and long-cherished hopes this would prove to my mother, whose heart was so set upon this marriage.  Would Julia marry me if she once heard of my unfortunate love for Olivia?  And, if not, what would become of our home?  My mother would have to give up one of us, for it was not to be supposed she would consent to live under the same roof with me, now the happy tie of cousinship was broken, and none dearer to be formed.

Which could my mother part with best?  Julia was almost as much her daughter as I was her son; yet me she pined after if ever I was absent long.  No; I could not resolve to run the risk of breaking that gentle, faithful heart, which loved me so fully.  I went back to Johanna, and took her hand in both of mine.

“Keep my secret,” I said, earnestly, “you two.  I will make Julia and my mother happy.  Do not mistrust me.  This infatuation overpowered me unawares.  I will conquer it; at the worst I can conceal it.  I promise you Julia shall never regret being my wife.”