with a frenzy of despair.

"Go where you may," I said, "I go with you! Friends--reputation--I
care nothing who I lose, or what I lose! Oh, Eustace, I am only a
woman--don't madden me! I can't live without you. I must and will be
your wife!"

Those wild words were all I could say before the misery and madness in
me forced their way outward in a burst of sobs and tears.

He yielded. He soothed me with his charming voice; he brought me back to
myself with his tender caresses. He called the bright heaven above us
to witness that he devoted his whole life to me. He vowed--oh, in such
solemn, such eloquent words!--that his one thought, night and day,
should be to prove himself worthy of such love as mine. And had he not
nobly redeemed the pledge? Had not the betrothal of that memorable night
been followed by the betrothal at the altar, by the vows before God! Ah,
what a life was before me! What more than mortal happiness was mine!

Again I lifted my head from his bosom to taste the dear delight of
seeing him by my side--my life, my love, my husband, my own!

Hardly awakened yet from the absorbing memories of the past to the sweet
realities of the present, I let my cheek touch his cheek, I whispered to
him softly, "Oh, how I love you! how I love you!"

The next instant I started back from him. My heart stood still. I put
my hand up to my face. What did I feel on my cheek? (_I_ had not been
weeping--I was too happy.) What did I feel on my cheek? A tear!

His face was still averted from me. I turned it toward me, with my own
hands, by main force.

I looked at him--and saw my husband, on our wedding-day, with his eyes
full of tears.

CHAPTER III. RAMSGATE SANDS.

EUSTACE succeeded in quieting my alarm. But I can hardly say that he
succeeded in satisfying my mind as well.

He had been thinking, he told me, of the contrast between his past and
his present life. Bitter remembrance of the years that had gone had
risen in his memory, and had filled him with melancholy misgivings of
his capacity to make my life with him a happy one. He had asked himself
if he had not met me too late--if he were not already a man soured and
broken by the disappointments and disenchantments of the past? Doubts
such as these, weighing more and more heavily on his mind, had filled
his eyes with the tears which I had discovered--tears which he now
entreated me, by my love for him, to dismiss from my memory forever.

I forgave him, comforte