n, but, of course, I could not avail myself of
it while Miss Huntington was so ill, and it was arranged--without her
knowledge, I have since learned--that I was to follow her hither when
she should have gained somewhat in strength. She had been here about a
month when I received word that I might come. A few days later I was
granted an interview, during which I confessed my affection and asked
her to become my wife.

"She told me frankly at once that she did not love me well enough to
marry me, and then, with sudden impulse, asked if she might make a
confession--might open her whole heart to me. Of course this request was
readily granted, and then she told me of her love for you, Mr.
Richardson; how it had originated, and how, when"--bending a grave look
upon Mrs. Mencke as he said this--"sorely pressed and alarmed by the
fear of being sent away from home and deprived of her liberty, she had
begged you to advise her what to do, and you told her that the only
safe-guard that you could throw around her would be to make her your
wife----"

"Yes," Wallace here interrupted, "Violet had been threatened with being
sent to a convent unless she would promise to cast me off. Such a fate
seemed to possess excessive terrors for her, and, being fully convinced
that nothing could change our affection for each other, I suggested that
we should be privately married, and then, if she was deprived of her
liberty, it would be in my power to aid her by claiming her as my wife."

"Yes, that was what she told me in substance," said Lord Cameron. "She
stated that you were married, but that you did not propose to claim her,
because of the opposition of her friends, until a year or two should
elapse and you were in a better position to make a home for her; that
you advised her to travel and see all of the world that was possible,
while you pursued your profession. Then came your separation, and she
made no secret of the unhappiness that this caused her, or of her
absorbing affection for you, and she spoke of the intense anxiety that
she experienced because she received no letters from you after leaving
home."

Surely Lord Cameron, with his usual noble self-abnegation, was doing all
in his power to soothe Wallace's wounded heart and prepare him for the
trial before him.

"But I wrote twice every week for more than two months," Wallace here
interposed, "without receiving a single letter from her. This fact also
we doubtless owe to the siste