ad and so
humiliating that I can hardly write it--and yet I must. Though we are
dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as firmly united
as if we were one, I am not legally your wife! Sir Blount did not die
till some time after we in England supposed. The service must be
repeated instantly. I have not been able to sleep all night. I feel
so frightened and ashamed that I can scarcely arrange my thoughts. The
newspapers sent with this will explain, if you have not seen
particulars. Do come to me as soon as you can, that we may consult on
what to do. Burn this at once.

'Your VIVIETTE.'

When the note was despatched she remembered that there was another hardly
less important question to be answered--the proposal of the Bishop for
her hand. His communication had sunk into nothingness beside the
momentous news that had so greatly distressed her. The two replies lay
before her--the one she had first written, simply declining to become Dr.
Helmsdale's wife, without giving reasons; the second, which she had
elaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating in
confidential detail the history of her love for Swithin, their secret
marriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what their
procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. It
was the letter she had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil's clerk
announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all.

This epistle she now destroyed--and with the less reluctance in knowing
that Swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as he
found that Bishop Helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentiment
concerning her. The first, in which, at the time of writing, the
_suppressio veri_ was too strong for her conscience, had now become an
honest letter, and sadly folding it she sent the missive on its way.

The sense of her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the
second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter
from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it
comforted her much.

He had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come to
her knowledge, and sent this line to reassure her in the perturbation she
must naturally feel. She was not to be alarmed at all. They two were
husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legal
flaw which accident had so curiously