e replying to them. I am sorry to
disappoint you. I repeat what I said on the beach--I have no other
feeling than a feeling of sympathy toward _you._ If you had consulted me
before your marriage, I should willingly have admitted you to my fullest
confidence. It is now too late. You are married. I recommend you to make
the best of your position, and to rest satisfied with things as they
are."

"Pardon me, madam," I remonstrated. "As things are, I don't know that I
_am_ married. All I know, unless you enlighten me, is that your son has
married me under a name that is not his own. How can I be sure whether I
am or am not his lawful wife?"

"I believe there can be no doubt that you are lawfully my son's wife,"
Mrs. Macallan answered. "At any rate it is easy to take a legal opinion
on the subject. If the opinion is that you are _not_ lawfully married,
my son (whatever his faults and failings may be) is a gentleman. He is
incapable of willfully deceiving a woman who loves and trusts him. He
will do you justice. On my side, I will do you justice, too. If the
legal opinion is adverse to your rightful claims, I will promise to
answer any questions which you may choose to put to me. As it is, I
believe you to be lawfully my son's wife; and I say again, make the best
of your position. Be satisfied with your husband's affectionate devotion
to you. If you value your peace of mind and the happiness of your life
to come, abstain from attempting to know more than you know now."

She sat down again with the air of a woman who had said her last word.

Further remonstrance would be useless; I could see it in her face; I
could hear it in her voice. I turned round to open the drawing-room
door.

"You are hard on me, madam," I said at parting. "I am at your mercy, and
I must submit."

She suddenly looked up, and answered me with a flush on her kind and
handsome old face.

"As God is my witness, child, I pity you from the bottom of my heart!"

After that extraordinary outburst of feeling, she took up her work with
one hand, and signed to me with the other to leave her.

I bowed to her in silence, and went out.

I had entered the house far from feeling sure of the course I ought
to take in the future. I left the house positively resolved, come what
might of it, to discover the secret which the mother and son were hiding
from me. As to the question of the name, I saw it now in the light in
which I ought to have seen it from the firs