“And so it was because you loved him so well that you deceived him so much!”

“Didn’t he deceive me much more?”

“There were a pair of you—­well matched!  So well, it seems a pity that you were parted!”

“Oh, how very unkind you are to me!”

“Not yet unkind!  Only waiting to see how you are going to behave!”

“I have never behaved badly!  I was not wicked; I was unhappy!  Unhappy from my birth, almost!  I had no evil designs against anybody.  I only wanted to be happy and to see people happy.  I honestly believed I was lawfully married to Captain Stillwater.  He took me to the Wirt House and registered our names as Mr. and Mrs. Stillwater.  And we were very happy until his ship sailed.  He gave me plenty of money before he went away; but I was heartbroken to part with him, and could take no pleasure in anything until I got a little used to his absence.”

“I think you told me that you met him once more before your final separation.  When was that meeting?  Eh?”

“Fabian Rockharrt, are you trying to catch me in a falsehood?  You know very well that I never told you anything of the sort I told you that I never saw him again after he sailed away that autumn day!  I waited all the autumn and heard nothing from him, I wrote to him often, but none of my letters were answered.  At length I longed so much to see him that I grew wild and reckless and resolved to follow him.  I took passage in the second cabin of the Africa and sailed for Liverpool, where I arrived about the middle of December.  I went to the agency of the Blue Star Line, to which his ship belonged, and inquired where he was to be found.  They told me he had sailed for Calcutta and had taken his wife with him!  It turned me to stone—­to stone, Fabian—­almost!  I remember I sat down on a bench and felt numb and cold.  And then I asked how long he had been married—­hoping, if it was true, that my own was the first and the lawful union.  They told me, for ten years, but as they had no family, his wife usually accompanied him on all his voyages.  So she had now gone with him to Calcutta.”

“I suspect the people in that office were pretty well acquainted with the handsome skipper’s ‘ways and manners,’ and that they understood your case at once.”

“I do really believe they did,” said Rose; “for they looked at me so strangely, and one man, who seemed to be a porter or a messenger, or something of that sort, said something about a sailor having a wife at every port.”

“So after that you came back to New York, and did, at last, what you should have done at first—­you wrote to me.”

“There was no one on earth to whom, under the peculiar circumstances, I could have written but to you.  Oh, Fabian! to whom else could I appeal?”

“And did I not respond promptly to your call?”

“Indeed you did, like a true knight, as you were.  And I did not deceive you by any false story, Fabian.  I told you all—­even thing—­how basely I had been deceived—­and you soothed and consoled me, and told me that, as I had not sinned intentionally, I had not sinned at all; and you brought me with you to the State capital, and established me comfortably there.”