: the church will bless them now."

"Hem," said Dr. Macgowan, gruffly, unable to controvert the logic of
Father Antoine's position in regard to the sacraments; "that is all
right from your point of view: but what do they make of it; I don't
suppose they admit that their first marriage was invalid, do they?"

Dr. Macgowan was in the worst of humors. He was about to lose a nurse
who had been to him for ten years, like his right hand; and he was
utterly discomfited and confused in all his confirmed impressions of her
character, by these startling revelations of her history. He would not
have been a Briton if these untoward combinations of events had not made
him surly.

"Nay, nay!" said Father Antoine, placably. "Not so. It is only the
husband; and he has but one thing to say: that she who was his wife died
to him, to her country, to her friends, to the law. There is even in her
village a beautiful and high monument of marble which sets forth all the
recountal of her death. She would go back to that country with him, and
confess to every man the thing she had done. She prayed him that he
would take her. But he will not. He says it would be shame; and the name
of his wife that died shall never be shamed. It is a narrow strait for a
man who loves a woman. I cannot say that it is clear to me what my own
will would be in such a case. I am much moved by each when I hear them
talk of it. Ah, but she has the grand honesty! Thou shouldst have heard
her cry out when he said that to confess all would be a shame.

"'Nay, nay!' cried she, 'to conceal is a shame.'

"' Ay!' replied her husband, 'but thou hast thought it no shame to
conceal thyself for these ten years, and to lie about thy name.' He
speaketh with a great anger to her at times, spite of his love.

"'Ah,' she answered him, in a voice which nigh set me to weeping: 'Ah,
my husband, I did think it shame: but I bore it, for sake of my love to
thee; and now that I know I was wrong, all the more do I long to confess
all, both that and this, and to stand forgiven or unforgiven, as I may,
clear in the eyes of all who ever knew me.'

"But he will not, and I have counselled her to pray him no more. For he
has already endured heavy things at her hands; and, if this one thing be
to her a grievous burden, all the more doth it show her love, if she
accept it and bear it to the end."

"Well, well," said Dr. Macgowan, somewhat wearied with Father Antoine's
sentiments and emotions,