And then, in a paroxysm of love and remorse, the young husband strode out of the library and upstairs to his wife’s room.  He found her alone, sitting by the window, in her loose white morning-robe, a book lying idly on her knee, herself whiter than the dress she wore.  She was not reading, the dark eyes looked straight before them with an unutterable pathos that it wrung his heart to see.

“My love! my life!” He had her in his strong arms, strained to his breast as if he never meant to let her go.  “My own dear Harrie!  Can you ever forgive me for the brutal words I used—­for the brutal way I acted?”

“My Everard! my beloved husband!  My darling! my darling!  You are not—­you will not be angry with your poor little Harrie?”

“I could not, my life!  What is the world worth to us if we can not love and trust?  I do love you, God alone knows how well!  I will trust you, though all the world should rise up against you!”

“Thank Heaven! thank Heaven!  Everard, dearest, I can not tell you—­I can not—­how miserable I have been!  If I lost your love I should die!  Trust me, my husband—­trust me!  Love me!  I have no one left in the wide world but you!”

She broke down in a wild storm of womanly weeping.  He held her in silence—­the hysterics did her good.  He only knew that he loved her with a passionate, consuming love, and not ten million secrets could keep them apart.

Presently she raised her head and looked at him.

“Everard, have you—­have you seen that man?”

His heart contracted with a sudden sharp pang, but he strove to restrain himself and be calm.

“Parmalee?  Yes, Harrie; I left him not an hour ago.”

“And he—­Everard—­for God’s sake—­”

“He told me nothing, Harrie.  You and he keep your secrets well.  He told me nothing, and he is gone.  He will never come back here more.”

He looked at her keenly, suspiciously, as he said it.  Alas! the intermittent fever was taking its hot fit again.  But she dropped her face on his shoulder and hid it.

“Has he left the village, Everard?” very faintly.

“I can not say.  I only know I have forbidden him this place,” he replied.  “Harrie, Harrie, my little wife!  You are very merciless!  You are torturing me, and I—­I would die to save you an instant’s pain!”

At that eloquent cry she slipped out of his arms and fell on her knees before him, her clasped hands hiding her face.

“May God grant me a short life!” was her frenzied cry, “for I never can tell you—­never, Everard, not on my dying bed—­the secret I have sworn to keep!”

“Sworn to keep!” It flashed upon him like a revelation.  “Sworn to whom? to your father, Harrie?”

“Do not ask me!  I can tell you nothing—­I dare not!  I am bound by an awful vow!  And, oh, I think I am the most wretched creature in the wide world!”