"We were ashamed of him," Lorin said, curtly. "He had not long been out of prison, and I feared to displease you. But go on."
"There is nothing more to tell," she said, in the same tired way. "When I found the horrible mistake I had made, I felt as if I should go mad. For the first glance at your cousin's face and the first sound of his voice told me that it was he I had known at Boulogne and whom I had married!"
"And you could believe," he exclaimed, in reproachful astonishment, "that I could have married you as a child for money, and could have threatened to ill-treat you if you did not lie and cheat for me?"
"Lorin," she said, suddenly, "when once I knew you it didn't matter what I remembered against you; for I loved you instantly, and I forgot—deliberately forgot—all that I thought I knew against you! At every word you uttered during our first meeting my thoughts grew gentler about you. When you left the house I watched you, as you know. I dreamed about you all that night; and from that moment the idea of you never left my mind. You see," she added, breaking down again, "I thought I was growing to love my own husband."
"And I remembered you," he said, wonderingly. "I had seen at Boulogne a portrait of you, with loose hair about your shoulders, as a child. But are you really sure that Wallace does not recognise you?"
"I half feared he would yesterday. Oh, Lorin, I can't bear even to talk of him! The very sight of him turns me sick and cold with dislike! Lorin"—seeing that he stood aloof from her, looking stern and pale—"you are not going to tell me to go back to him?"
In an instant he was kneeling by the side of her chair with his arms wrapped about her.
"Go back to him!" he repeated in horror. "Heaven forbid! Lina, you don't know the man—you can't understand his nature. The very thought of his claiming you is sacrilege! That marriage of yours is all an ugly dream which you must forget. It is not as if he wanted you, or as if he even knew of your existence. I want you, darling! My whole nature cries out for you! I cannot live another day without you. Listen to me, my dear one! I don't believe your story—you have no proofs of it. You have, on the contrary, my cousin's word, Captain Garth's letters, and the Boulogne certificate against you—and the testimony of my own eyes too, for I saw Laline's grave. You are not she. You are 'Lina Grahame;' and by this time to-morrow you shall be 'Lina Armstrong.' All that you told me was pure fancy. You are weak and hysterical and over-wrought, and living in the unwholesome, over-strained mental atmosphere of this ghost-ridden and witchcraft-haunted house has turned your brain a little. There is only one real and true thing in life, only one thing worth reckoning with—our love for each other. The rest are shadows and fancies. Clasp your dear hands round my neck, my queen, my wife, and forget everything but that I love you and you love me!"
He was holding her passionately to him, raining quick hot kisses upon her lips and eyes. The fear of losing her worked in him like madness, and he felt that he must clasp her close and fast against the world.
And she? For a few brief seconds she yielded to the dear delight of his embrace, and clung to him, still sobbing like a penitent child. But, even while her lips met his, it seemed as though the spectre of Duty rose impalpably between them, and she turned her face abruptly away from his kisses and drooped her cheek upon his shoulder.