“Since we parted at Brussels,” I said, “my wife has died.  Here is a copy of the medical certificate of her death.”

Stella refused to look at it.  “I don’t understand such things,” she answered faintly.  “What is this?”

She took up my wife’s death-bed confession.

“Read it,” I said.

She looked frightened.  “What will it tell me?” she asked.

“It will tell you, Stella, that false appearances once led you into wronging an innocent man.”

Having said this, I walked away to a window behind her, at the further end of the room, so that she might not see me while she read.

After a time—­how much longer it seemed to be than it really was!—­I heard her move.  As I turned from the window, she ran to me, and fell on her knees at my feet.  I tried to raise her; I entreated her to believe that she was forgiven.  She seized my hands, and held them over her face—­they were wet with her tears.  “I am ashamed to look at you,” she said.  “Oh, Bernard, what a wretch I have been!”

I never was so distressed in my life.  I don’t know what I should have said, what I should have done, if my dear old dog had not helped me out of it.  He, too, ran up to me, with the loving jealousy of his race, and tried to lick my hands, still fast in Stella’s hold.  His paws were on her shoulder; he attempted to push himself between us.  I think I successfully assumed a tranquillity which I was far from really feeling.  “Come, come!” I said, “you mustn’t make Traveler jealous.”  She let me raise her.  Ah, if she could have kissed me—­but that was not to be done; she kissed the dog’s head, and then she spoke to me.  I shall not set down what she said in these pages.  While I live, there is no fear of my forgetting those words.

I led her back to her chair.  The letter addressed to me by the Rector of Belhaven still lay on the table, unread.  It was of some importance to Stella’s complete enlightenment, as containing evidence that the confession was genuine.  But I hesitated, for her sake, to speak of it just yet.

“Now you know that you have a friend to help and advise you—­” I began.

“No,” she interposed; “more than a friend; say a brother.”

I said it.  “You had something to ask of me,” I resumed, “and you never put the question.”

She understood me.

“I meant to tell you,” she said, “that I had written a letter of refusal to Mr. Romayne’s lawyers.  I have left Ten Acres, never to return; and I refuse to accept a farthing of Mr. Romayne’s money.  My mother—­though she knows that we have enough to live on—­tells me I have acted with inexcusable pride and folly.  I wanted to ask if you blame me, Bernard, as she does?”

I daresay I was inexcusably proud and foolish too.  It was the second time she had called me by my Christian name since the happy bygone time, never to come again.  Under whatever influence I acted, I respected and admired her for that refusal, and I owned it in so many words.  This little encouragement seemed to relieve her.  She was so much calmer that I ventured to speak of the Rector’s letter.