‘I have waited for you here … because I have things that I must tell you in private.’
“So you believe. Now listen to me: I married Samuel Rock in order that you might marry Emma Levinger. I meant to marry you, Henry, but your mother came to me and implored me not to do so, so I took this means of putting myself out of the reach of temptation.”
“My mother came to you, and you did that! Why, you must be mad!”
“Perhaps; but so it is, and the plot has answered very well, especially as our child is dead.”
“Our child!” he said, turning deathly pale: “was there any child?”
“Yes, Henry; and she was very like you. Her name was Joan. I thought that you would wish her to be called Joan. I buried her about a month ago.”
For a moment he hid his face in his hands, then said, “Perhaps, Joan, you will explain, for I am bewildered.”
So she told him all.
“Fate and our own folly have dealt very hardly with us, Joan,” he said in a quiet voice when she had finished; “and now I do not see what there is to be done. We are both of us married, and there is nothing between us except our past and the dead child. By Heaven! you are a noble woman, but also you are a foolish one. Why could you not consult me instead of listening to my mother, or to any one else who chose to plead with you in my interests—and their own?”
“If I had consulted you, Henry, by now I should have been your wife.”