e sense of a spoilt life and of a horrible weakness always coming
between him and happiness. The shadow of Madame Danterre had darkened
his youth; a time of folly--and so little pleasure in that folly, he
moaned--had been succeeded by an actual tyranny. The claim that she was
his wife had begun early after her divorce from Mr. Dexter, and it
seemed extraordinary that he had not denied it at once. David Bright had
been taken ill with acute fever in Mrs. Dexter's house almost
immediately after that event. Mrs. Dexter declared that he had gone
through the form of marriage with her before witnesses, and she declared
also that she had in her possession the certificate of marriage. The
date she gave for the marriage was during the days when he had been down
with the fever, and he never could remember what had happened.

"God knows," he wrote, "how I searched my memory hour by hour, day by
day, but the blank was absolute. I don't to this hour know what passed
during those days."

While still feeble from illness he had given her all the money he could
spare, and for years the blackmail had continued. Then, at last, after
he had been a year in England, the worm had turned.

"I dared her to do her worst. I declared, what I am absolutely convinced
to have been the case, that the marriage certificate she had shown me
was a forgery, and I concluded that if she proved the marriage by
forgery and perjury, I should institute proceedings for divorce on the
grounds of her subsequent life. I got no answer, and for three years
there was total silence. Then came a letter from a friend saying that
Madame Danterre, who had taken her maiden name, was dying and wished me
to know that she forgave me." With this note had been sent to him a
diamond ring he had given her in the first days of her influence over
him. He sent it back, but months later he got it again, returned by the
Post Office authorities, as no one of the name he had written to could
be found.

Then came a solemn declaration that he had never doubted of Madame
Danterre's death.

"I thought that to have spoilt my youth was enough; but she was yet to
destroy my best years. Ah! Rose," he wrote, "if I had loved you less it
would have been more bearable. I met you; I worshipped you; won you.
Then, after a brief dream of joy, the cloud came down, and my evil
genius was upon me. I don't think you were in love with me, my beloved,
but it would have come even after you had found out wh