possible
point of view. He told her it was probable that Enid did not know her
own mind; that she would be miserable if she married a man who could not
love her; that the whole world would cry shame on him if it ever learned
the circumstances of her father's death; that Enid herself would be the
first to reproach him, and would indeed bitterly hate him if she ever
knew.

"If she ever knew--if the world ever knew!" said Florence scornfully.
Hitherto she had been very quiet and let her brother say his say. "As if
she or the world were ever going to know! There is no way in which the
truth can be known unless one of us tells it; and I ask you, is that a
thing that either of us is very likely to do? It would mean social ruin
for us--utter and irretrievable ruin! If we only hold our tongues, Enid
and the world will never know."

"That is true," he answered moodily; and then he sat so long in one
position, with his arms crossed on his breast; and his eyes fixed on
vacancy, that Florence asked him with some curiosity of what he was
thinking.

"I was wondering," he said, "whether that poor wretch Westwood found his
undeserved punishment more galling than I sometimes find the bonds of
secrecy and falsehood and dishonor that bind me now. He at any rate has
gained his freedom; but I am in bondage still. I have my sentence--a
life sentence--to work out."

"He is free now, certainly," Florence answered, with an odd intonation
of her voice; "so I do not think that you need trouble yourself about
him. Think of Enid rather, and of her needs."

"Free? Yes--he is dead," said Hubert quickly, replying to something in
her tone rather than to her words. "He died as I told you--some time
ago."

"You read it in the newspaper?"

"Yes."

"And you never saw that next day the report of his death was
contradicted?"

"Florence, what do you mean?"

"You went away from England just then with a mind at ease, did you not?
But I was here, with nothing to do but to think and brood and read; and
I read more than that. There were two men named Westwood at Portland,
and the one who died--as was stated in next day's paper--was not the one
we knew."

"And he is in prison all this time? Don't you see that that makes my
guilt the worse--brings back all the intolerable burden, renders it
simply impossible that I should ever make an innocent girl happy?" His
voice was hoarse, and the veins upon his forehead stood out like knotted
cords.

"Sit d