ook up
her sewing again in her former position.

"Lucy," I said, standing over her, "does not the voice of our
child--for I cannot doubt it is our child--plead for me? Listen a
moment. When I returned from that ill-starred Russian voyage, I
flew at once to join you. You had been in my heart during all my
absence, and my return home was to be crowned with your love. But,
to my consternation, I found strangers occupying the old rooms,
and the woman told me with every circumstance of harrowing detail
the story of your death by typhus, and that your mother followed
you to the grave scarce a day later. Heartbroken as I was, I never
sought for further confirmation than the nameless graves she pointed
out to me by your parish church. She told me, too, your effects
were burned by order of the overseers, and I took it for granted
she had stolen anything of value that might have been left. When
I found at my banker's that a lieutenancy in Berwick's was awaiting
my application, I only too eagerly seized the opportunity of escaping
from a country where I should be constantly reminded of my ruined
past, and since that day I have never set foot in London till the
present. Oh, Lucy! Lucy! I see it all now. The birth of our child
was approaching. You, poor soul, were an unacknowledged wife; I
was wandering, a shipwrecked stranger beyond all means of
communication, and you fled from the finger of shame that cruel
hands would hare pointed at you. Why that hag should have gone to
such lengths to deceive me I cannot even guess. But now, my dear
love, my dearest wife, it is at an end! I have a position--at least
I am a captain, with fair chance of promotion--I no longer have a
family to consider, and once I get out of this present trap I will
acknowledge you before the whole world, and we will wipe out the
cruel past as if it had never existed."

"I have no past," she said, quietly.

"Then, Lucy darling, as truly as I am your husband I will make you
a future."

"I have no husband," she answered, in the same quiet tone: "my
husband died the day my boy was born."

"But, Lucy, my wife, you have love?"

"Not such love as you mean. My love, such as it is here, is for my
boy. All else is for something beyond."

"But, Lucy, have you nothing left for me? Surely you do not doubt
my word?"

"No," she answered, slowly. "You have never deceived me that I know
of. Until to-night I believed you had left me, but I know now, it
is I who have l