on in London: "They are to be married to-morrow. If you have
anything imperative to say, write to-night, or come."

Paul and Greta saw each other only for five minutes that day amid the
general hubbub; but their few words were pregnant with serious issues.
Beneath the chorus of their hearts' joy there was an undersong of
discord; and neither knew of the other's perplexity.

Greta was thinking of Hugh Ritson's mysterious threat. Whether or not
Hugh had the power of preventing their marriage was a question of less
consequence to Greta at this moment than the other question of whether
or not she could tell Paul what Hugh had said. As the day wore on, her
uncertainty became feverish. If she spoke, she must reveal--what
hitherto she had partly hidden--the importunity and unbrotherly
disloyalty of Hugh's love. She must also awaken fresh distress in Paul's
mind, already overburdened with grief for the loss of his mother.
Probably Paul would be powerless to interpret his brother's strange
language. And if he should be puzzled, the more he must be pained.
Perhaps Hugh Ritson's threat was nothing but the outburst of a
distempered spirit--the noise of a bladder that is emptying itself.
Still, Greta's nervousness increased; no reason, no sophistry could
allay it. She felt like a blind man who knows by the current of air on
his face that he has reached two street crossings, and can not decide
which turn to take.

Paul, on his part, had a grave question to revolve. He was thinking
whether it was the act of an honorable man to let Greta marry him in
ignorance of the fact that he was not his father's legitimate son. Yet
he could never tell her. The oath he had taken over his father's body
must seal his lips forever. His mother's honor was wrapped up in that
oath. Break the one, and the other was no longer inviolate. True, it
would be to Greta, and Greta alone, and she and he were one. True, too,
his mother was now dead to the world. But the oath was rigid:

"Never to reveal to any human soul, by word or deed, his act, or her
shame." He had sworn it, and he must keep it. The conflict of emotion
was terrible. Love was dragging him one way, and love the other. Honor
said yes, and honor said no. His heart's first thought was to tell Greta
everything, to keep nothing back from her whose heart's last thought was
his. But the secret of his birth must lie as a dead and speechless thing
within him.

If it was not the act of an honorable ma