“To save me? Then it was not you who caused my arrest?”
“Yes, Jacob, but I did not know what I was doing. I was hurried away by passion. Forgive me, Jacob.”
“Your regrets will avail little now,” he said, bitterly. “You have placed me here, and here I must stay. Oh, it is horrible,” he said, shuddering, “to be shut up in this damp, noisome cell!”
“Listen, Jacob,” said Margaret; “your case is not so hopeless as you imagine. It was at my instance that you were arrested. Heaven knows that I had some cause. But I am sorry for it now. If you are convicted, it can only be upon my testimony. Should I absent myself from your trial, nothing could be proved against you, and you would be released.”
“Will you do this, Margaret?” asked the prisoner, hope once more kindling in his heart. “If you will, I will forever bless you. My fate hangs upon your decision. You don’t know how I have suffered already, in the few hours I have stayed here. Have compassion upon me, Margaret, and I will take you back again as my wife. In one respect I have deceived you. Our marriage was genuine. Forgive me for trying to persuade you otherwise.”
An expression of earnest gratitude and relief overspread Margaret’s face. “Thank you for those words, Jacob. It cancels all the harshness and all the wrong that I have met at your hands. Then I am really your wedded wife?”
“Yes, Margaret,” said Jacob, humbly, for confinement had wrought a salutary change in his deportment; “I confess that I wished to convince you of the contrary. I even meditated, in my wickedness, marrying another for her wealth, not because I loved her. But it is all over now, and I am glad of it. Only release me from this imprisonment, and I promise——”
“Promise nothing,” said Margaret; “I do not wish to take advantage of your present situation, when perhaps you might be induced to promise that which you would afterwards repent.”
“But, I am sincere.”
“You may be now, but will it last? I do not wish,” she resumed, with proud composure, “to force myself upon you against your will. You have already freed me from my chief trouble, in acknowledging that our marriage was not the idle mockery you would have had me believe. Farther than that, I require nothing of you. If, at the end of six months from your release, you still desire that I should come to you, I will. Till that time has passed, it is best that we should be to each other as strangers.”