I shall be
wretched. That is all I know."

I had left my seat by Johanna, and was pacing to and fro in the room,
too restless and miserable to keep still. The low moan of the sea sighed
all about the house. I could have cast myself on the floor had I been
alone, and wept and sobbed like a woman. I could see no loop-hole of
escape from the mesh of circumstances which caught me in their net.

A long, dreary, colorless, wretched life stretched before me, with Julia
my inseparable companion, and Olivia altogether lost to me. Captain
Carey and Johanna, neither of whom had tasted the sweets and bitters of
marriage, looked sorrowfully at me and shook their heads.

"You must tell Julia," said Johanna, after a long pause.

"Tell Julia!" I echoed. "I would not tell her for worlds!"

"You must tell her," she repeated; "it is your clear duty. I know it
will be most painful to you both, but you have no right to marry her
with this secret on your mind."

"I should be true to her," I interrupted, somewhat angrily.

"What do you call being true, Martin Dobree?" she asked, more calmly
than she had spoken before. "Is it being true to a woman to let her
believe you choose and love her above all other women when that is
absolutely false? No; you are too honorable for that. I tell you it is
your plain duty to let Julia know this, and know it at once."

"It will break her heart," I said, with a sharp twinge of conscience and
a cowardly shrinking from the unpleasant duty urged upon me.

"It will not break Julia's heart," said Johanna, very sadly; "it may
break your mother's."

I reeled as if a sharp blow had struck me. I had been thinking far less
of my mother than of Julia; but I saw, as with a flash of lightning,
what a complete uprooting of all her old habits and long-cherished hopes
this would prove to my mother, whose heart was so set upon this
marriage. Would Julia marry me if she once heard of my unfortunate love
for Olivia? And, if not, what would become of our home? My mother would
have to give up one of us, for it was not to be supposed she would
consent to live under the same roof with me, now the happy tie of
cousinship was broken, and none dearer to be formed.

Which could my mother part with best? Julia was almost as much her
daughter as I was her son; yet me she pined after if ever I was absent
long. No; I could not resolve to run the risk of breaking that gentle,
faithful heart, which loved me so fully. I went bac