“I had sunk down in my chair and covered my face with my hands.
“He came up to me, laid his hand on the back of my chair, and dropping his voice to the lowest tones of reverential sympathy, he said these terrible words:
“‘No, Elfrida! No, my poor child! It breaks my heart to tell you the truth, that I have only recently learned to my dismay; but you must hear it sooner or later. Better to hear it kindly, tenderly told by a friend’s tongue than harshly and suddenly by a wordling’s or an enemy’s. No, Elfrida! You are no wife.’
“‘Saviola is dead, then!’ I exclaimed, in an access of excitement.
“‘No, Elfrida; that is not what I mean. You are no wife, because—you never have been.’
“I lifted my head and gazed on him in dumb horror and amazement.
“He met my look with one of deepest sorrow and commiseration.
“‘It is false!’ I cried, as soon as I could speak. ‘It is foully, cruelly false!’
“‘I would to Heaven it were!’ he sighed. ‘I would to Heaven it were!’
“There was something in his look and tone that seemed to force truth and despair into my soul. Had my marriage ceremony been unlawful, notwithstanding Anglesea’s pretended carefulness? Or what had happened? How had I been betrayed? I struggled not to believe him—not to question him; but I could not help doing both.