n the face of the Verdict, that I am an innocent man?"

"I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite of the
Verdict."

"Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know what
has happened--and sooner or later they must know it--what will they say?
They will say, 'He began badly; he concealed from our niece that he had
been wedded to a first wife; he married our niece under a false name.
He may say he is innocent; but we have only his word for it. When he was
put on his Trial, the Verdict was Not Proven. Not Proven won't do for
us. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him
prove it.' That is what the world thinks and says of me. That is what
your friends will think and say of me. The time is coming, Valeria, when
you--even You--will feel that your friends have reason to appeal to on
their side, and that you have no reason on yours."

"That time will never come!" I answered, warmly. "You wrong me, you
insult me, in thinking it possible!"

He put down my hand from him, and drew back a step, with a bitter smile.

"We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me is new
and young. Time, which wears away all things, will wear away the first
fervor of that love."

"Never! never!"

He drew back from me a little further still.

"Look at the world around you," he said. "The happiest husbands and
wives have their occasional misunderstandings and disagreements; the
brightest married life has its passing clouds. When those days come for
_us,_ the doubts and fears that you don't feel now will find their way
to you then. When the clouds rise in _our_ married life--when I say my
first harsh word, when you make your first hasty reply--then, in the
solitude of your own room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, you
will think of my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that I
was held responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved. You
will say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in _her_ time, with a harsh word
from him and with a hasty reply from her? Will it one day end with me
as the jury half feared that it ended with her?' Hideous questions for
a wife to ask herself! You will stifle them; you will recoil from them,
like a good woman, with horror. But when we meet the next morning you
will be on your guard, and I shall see it, and know in my heart of
hearts what it means. Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word
may be harsher sti