fluences had
been at work. Too late she had discovered that she had never really loved
Gilbert Fenton; that the calm grateful liking which she had told herself
must needs be the sole version of the grand passion whereof her nature
was capable, had been only the tamest, most ordinary kind of friendship
after all, and that in the depths of her soul there was a capacity for an
utterly different attachment--a love which was founded on neither respect
nor gratitude, but which sprang into life in a moment, fatal and
all-absorbing from its birth.

Heaven knows she had struggled bravely against this luckless passion, had
resisted long and steadily the assiduous pursuit, the passionate
half-despairing pleading, of her lover, who would not be driven away, and
who invented all kinds of expedients for seeing her, however difficult
the business might be, or however resolutely she might endeavour to avoid
him. It was only after her uncle's death, when her mind was weakened by
excessive grief, that her strong determination to remain faithful to her
absent betrothed had at last given way before the force of those tender
passionate prayers, and she had consented to the hasty secret marriage
which her lover had proposed. Her consent once given, not a moment had
been lost. The business had been hurried on with the utmost eagerness by
the impetuous lover, who would give her as little opportunity as possible
of changing her mind, and who had obtained complete mastery of her will
from the moment in which she promised to be his wife.

She loved him with all the unselfish devotion of which her nature was
capable; and no thought of the years to come, or of what her future life
might be with this man, of whose character and circumstances she knew so
very little, ever troubled her. Having sacrificed her fidelity to Gilbert
Fenton, she held all other sacrifices light as air--never considered them
at all, in fact. When did a generous romantic girl of nineteen ever stop
to calculate the chances of the future, or fear to encounter poverty and
trouble with the man she loved? To Marian this man was henceforth all the
world. It was not that he was handsomer, or better, or in any obvious way
superior to Gilbert Fenton. It was only that he was just the one man able
to win her heart. That mysterious attraction which reason can never
reduce to rule, which knows no law of precedent or experience, reigned
here in full force. It is just possible that the despe