Despicable! the work of a man without conscience or heart!  Yes, and he knew it, and for weeks his sleep was broken by visions and his waking hours rendered dreadful by fears.  How had she taken this cool assumption that the ceremony performed in the path of the snow was voided by lack of proof?  To whom had she ascribed the loss of her ring, and what must she think of him?  He had left Nice almost immediately, but wherever he went, in whatever hotel he stayed, or through whatever street he passed, he was always expecting to see her figure rise up before him in the majesty of innocence and outraged love.

Thus several weeks passed, and seeing nothing of her, hearing nothing from her, a different apprehension darkened his days and despoiled him of rest at night.  Grief if not shame had killed her; and the weight of her fancied doom lay heavy on his heart.  At last he could bear it no longer, and stealing back to Nice he entered it one dark night and prepared to learn for himself what he feared to trust to the discretion of another.  Alone, with hidden face and heavily throbbing heart, he trod the familiar ways and encircled the familiar walls.  Had she been there——­

But the windows were blank and the place desolate, and he fled the spot and the town, with his questions unasked and his fears unallayed.  In two days he had sailed for home.  With the ocean between them he might forget; and in time he did.  As week followed week, and the silence he had half trusted, half feared, remained unbroken, his equanimity gradually returned, and he prepared to face the prospect of his new marriage much as a man who watches for a dreaded door to open moves with restored confidence about his affairs, when at last convinced that the door is padlocked and the key lost.

One precaution and one only he was wise enough to take.  He told his story to Lucie’s brother, and left it to him to say whether or not he should marry his sister.  And the answer was yes; that if trouble came he would see him through it.  A marriage which could not be proved was no marriage, and as for anything else, Lucie’s happiness must not be sacrificed to a boy’s peccadillos.  What were a few wild oats sown by a man of his promise?

And was this the end?  Did Ermentrude accept her doom without a struggle?

Let us see.

* * * * *

One afternoon in June, there entered the parlor of the old-fashioned mansion of the Roberts family a lady who had asked to see Mrs. Roberts on business of an important nature.  Though plainly clad, her appearance possessed an elegance which insured respect; but when alone and seated in the darkest corner of the great drawing room she put up a trembling hand to thrust back her veil, the countenance thus revealed betrayed an emotion hardly in keeping with the quiet bearing with which she had advanced under the servant’s eye.