Of the two, he was most calm and self-possessed. Bowing in answer to the inclination of her head, he drew a chair in front of her, and when he sat down she saw a package of papers in his hand.
"I am glad, Mrs. Laurance, that you grant me this opportunity of saying a few words, which after to-day I shall seek no occasion to repeat; for with this interview ends all intercourse between us, at least in this world. These papers I found in poor father's private desk, and I have read them. They are your notes, and the marriage contract, which only awaited the signature he intended to affix."
She held out her hand, and a burning blush dyed her cheek, as she reflected on the loathsome purpose which had framed that carefully worded instrument.
"To-day I leave Paris for America, to front, as best I may, the changed aspect of life. I have not yet told Abbie of the cloud of sorrow and humiliation that will soon break over our family circle, for poor little Maud has been quite ill, and I deferred my bitter revelation until her mother's mind is composed and clear enough to grasp the mournful truth. In the suit which I presume you will commence, as soon as I land in America, you need apprehend no effort on my part to elude the consequences of my own criminal folly and rashness. I shall attempt no defence, beyond requiring my counsel to state that no communication ever reached me from you; that I believed you the wife of another; and I shall also insist upon the reading of the two letters in answer to those I wrote, requesting the President and Professor to ascertain where you were. I was assured that a marriage contracted during my minority was invalid, and without due investigation of the statutes of the State in which it was performed and which had unfortunately undergone a change, I believed it. Your right as a wife is clear, indisputable, inalienable, and cannot be withheld; and the divorce you desire will inevitably be granted. I cannot censure your resolution, it is due to yourself, doubly due to your child—our child! My child! Oh! that I had known the truth seventeen years ago! How different your fate and mine!"
She leaned back, closing her eyes, against the eloquent pleading of that mesmeric countenance which was slowly robbing her of her stern purposes; renewing the spell she had never been able to fully resist.
He saw the spasm of pain that wrinkled her brow, blanched her lips; and gazing into the lovely face so dear to him, he exclaimed:
"Minnie! Minnie! Oh, my wife! My own wife!"
He sank on his knees before her, and his handsome head fell upon the arm of her chair. She covered her face with her hands, and a smothered sob broke from her tortured heart.
"I have sinned, but not intentionally against you. God is my witness had I known all twenty oceans could not have kept me from my wife and my baby. When you lived it all over again that night, when I saw you ill, deserted, in a charity hospital, with the child you say is mine cradled in your arms, oh! then indeed I suffered what all the pangs of perdition cannot surpass. When you and I married we were but children, but I loved you; afterward when I was a man, I madly renewed those vows to one, whom I was urged, persuaded, to wed. I am not a villain, and I know my duties to the mother of my afflicted Maud, to the child of my loveless union, and I intend rigidly to discharge them. But, Minnie, God knows that you are my true, lawful wife, and I want here upon my knees, before we part for ever, to tell you that no other woman ever possessed my heart. I have tried to be a patient, kind, indulgent husband to Abbie, but when I look at you, and think of her, remembering that my own rash blindness shut me from the Eden that now seems so deliciously alluring, when I realize what might have been for you and me, my punishment indeed appears unendurable. Ah, no language can describe my feelings, as I looked at that noble, lovely girl. Oh the fond pride of knowing that she is mine as well as yours! My wife! my wife, let the holy blue eyes and pure lips of our baby, our daughter, plead her father's forgiveness——"
His voice faltered. There was a deep silence. Although kneeling so near, he made no attempt to touch her. For fifteen years she had struggled against all tender memories, and every softening recollection had been harshly banished. She had trained herself to despise and hate the man who had so blackened her life at its dewy threshold; but the mysterious workings of a woman's heart baffle experience, analysis, and conjecture.