parated from her, off you rush to make love to me--not
first to me either, for you went to several places--'

'No, not several places.'

'Yes, you told me so yourself--that you went first to the only lodging
in which your wife had been known as Mrs. Manston, and when you found
that the lodging-house-keeper had gone away and died, and that nobody
else in the street had any definite ideas as to your wife's personal
appearance, and came and proposed the arrangement we carried out--that I
should personate her. Your taking all this trouble shows that something
more serious than love had to do with the matter.'

'Humbug--what trouble after all did I take? When I found Cytherea would
not stay with me after the wedding I was much put out at being left
alone again. Was that unnatural?'

'No.'

'And those favouring accidents you mention--that nobody knew my first
wife--seemed an arrangement of Providence for our mutual benefit, and
merely perfected a half-formed impulse--that I should call you my first
wife to escape the scandal that would have arisen if you had come here
as anything else.'

'My love, that story won't do. If Mrs. Manston was burnt, Cytherea, whom
you love better than me, could have been compelled to live with you as
your lawful wife. If she was not burnt, why should you run the risk of
her turning up again at any moment and exposing your substitution of me,
and ruining your name and prospects?'

'Why--because I might have loved you well enough to run the risk
(assuming her not to be burnt, which I deny).'

'No--you would have run the risk the other way. You would rather have
risked her finding you with Cytherea as a second wife, than with me as a
personator of herself--the first one.'

'You came easiest to hand--remember that.'

'Not so very easy either, considering the labour you took to teach
me your first wife's history. All about how she was a native of
Philadelphia. Then making me read up the guide-book to Philadelphia, and
details of American life and manners, in case the birthplace and
history of your wife, Eunice, should ever become known in this
neighbourhood--unlikely as it was. Ah! and then about the handwriting of
hers that I had to imitate, and the dying my hair, and rouging, to make
the transformation complete? You mean to say that that was taking less
trouble than there would have been in arranging events to make Cytherea
believe herself your wife, and live with you?'

'You were a nee