ill never quite forget me."

"He will never do that," said Saidie, going away with her message but
half satisfied, and Bella turned a flushed cheek to her pillow.

And then, for the second time, John Chetwynd asked, "Who is that
man?"

And Bella tried feebly to tell him. He had been attached to her for a
long time, and had come over with her from the States.

"And you--did you mean to marry him, Bella?"

"I had thought of it--it seemed suicidal to say no to such an offer,
and then I--oh, Jack, when I saw you I knew I could never love any
other man!"

He poured out a draught and held it to her trembling lips.

"I feel so strangely weak," she said; "you are going to marry Ethel,
and I am nothing to you now?"

John Chetwynd drew her close to him, so that the tired head rested on
his shoulder with the sweet familiarity of long ago.

"Listen," he said. "I have been a coward, frightened of the truth.
The world was dearer to me than happiness, or I thought so, and I
hesitated, afraid of its contempt. But amid my weakness was one
thought, one impulse, which no amount of worldly prudence or
consideration could stifle, and Bella--my wife--that was my love for
you."

"Jack, Jack, is it true?"

"I have loved you always, through all my life, you and no other. I
see now how hard I must have seemed to you and how wild and
unreasonable I was in my expectation from you and how at last it
drove you from my side. The shame of it is not more yours than mine.
We both erred, we both sinned; but I was older and should have been
wiser; the burden of it should fall on me. The world is nothing to me
now--less than nothing. Let us take up life where we broke it off.
Give me back the past, which held for me all of happiness I have ever
known."

She lay with a smile of peace upon her face, both hands clinging to
his.

"I have communed with myself and thought it well out, and I believe
that to bind my life, with its memories of you, to the girl to whom I
am engaged, would be a cruel wrong and an injustice to her. She
deserves a better fate, and I honestly feel that the rupture will not
grieve her much. We will remarry, you and I. I will take you away
from England, I will guard and cherish you, and in my love for you,
you will grow stronger. Oh! my darling, my darling, if you knew what
life has been to me since you went; how I have blamed myself,--I who
ought to have shielded you against yourself, and have been a moral
backbone to