wilfully agreed to the falsehood. For
himself he should resolve at once what steps he meant to take. Then he
departed, it being at that moment after nine in the evening. In the
morning he was gone again, and from that moment they had never either
heard of him or seen him.

How was it to be with them? They could have almost brought themselves to
think it a dream, were it not that others besides themselves had seen the
man, and known that Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy had been in St. Louis. Then
there came to him an idea that even she might disbelieve the words which
he had spoken;--that even she might think his story to have been false.
But to this she soon put an end. "Dearest," she said, "I never knew a
word that was true to come from his mouth, or a word that was false from
yours."

Should they part? There is no one who reads this but will say that they
should have parted. Every day passed together as man and wife must be a
falsehood and a sin. There would be absolute misery for both in
parting;--but there is no law from God or man entitling a man to escape
from misery at the expense of falsehood and sin. Though their hearts
might have burst in the doing of it, they should have parted. Though she
would have been friendless, alone, and utterly despicable in the eyes of
the world, abandoning the name which she cherished, as not her own, and
going back to that which she utterly abhorred, still she should have done
it. And he, resolving, as no doubt he would have done under any
circumstances, that he must quit the city of his adoption,--he should have
left her with such material sustenance as her spirit would have enabled
her to accept, should have gone his widowed way, and endured as best he
might the idea that he had left the woman whom he loved behind, in the
desert, all alone! That he had not done so the reader is aware. That he
had lived a life of sin,--that he and she had continued in one great
falsehood,--is manifest enough. Mrs. Stantiloup, when she hears it all,
will have her triumph. Lady De Lawle's soft heart will rejoice because
that invitation was not accepted. The Bishop will be unutterably shocked;
but, perhaps, to the good man there will be some solace in the feeling
that he had been right in his surmises. How the Doctor bore it this story
is intended to tell,--and how also Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke bore it, when the
sin and the falsehood were made known to all the world around them. The
myster