how
much I love you, how my life is bound up in you, or you would
have been proof against that person in Sark.

"I think it right to tell you all this now, though it is not
in my nature to make professions and demonstrations of my
love. Think of me, of yourself, of your poor mother. You were
never selfish, and you can do noble things. I do not say it
would be noble to marry me; but it would be a noble thing to
conquer an ignoble passion. How could Martin Dobree fall in
love with an unknown adventuress?

"I shall remain in the house all day to-morrow, and if you can
come to see me, feeling that this has been a dream of folly
from which you have awakened, I will not ask you to own it.
That you come at all will be a sign to me that you wish it
forgotten and blotted out between us, as if it had never been.

"With true, deep love for you, Martin, believe me still

"Your affectionate JULIA."

I pondered over Julia's letter as I dressed. There was not a word of
resentment in it. It was full of affectionate thought for us all. But
what reasoning! I had not known Olivia so long as I had known her,
therefore I could not love her as truly!

A strange therefore!

I had scarcely had leisure to think of Olivia in the hurry and anxiety
of the last twenty-four hours. But now "that person in Sark," the
"unknown adventuress," presented itself very vividly to my mind. Know
her! I felt as if I knew every tone of her voice and every expression of
her face; yet I longed to know them more intimately. The note she had
written to me a few weeks ago I could repeat word for word, and the
handwriting seemed far more familiar to me even than Julia's. There was
no doubt my love for her was very different from my affection for Julia;
and if it was an infatuation, it was the sweetest, most exquisite
infatuation that could ever possess me.

Yet there was no longer any hesitation in my mind as to what I must do.
Julia knew all now. I had told her distinctly of my love for Olivia, and
she would not believe it. She appeared wishful to hold me to my
engagement in spite of it; at any rate, so I interpreted her letter. I
did not suppose that I should not live it down, this infatuation, as
they chose to call it. I might hunger and thirst, and be on the point of
perishing; then my nature would turn to other nutriment, and assimilate
it to its contracted and stultified ca