He wound his arms close around her, and she could feel his feverish breath as his lips almost touched her burning cheek. In the words “Marian Grey, Marian Grey,” there was a deep pathos, as if all the loving tenderness of his nature were centered upon that name, and it brought the tears in torrents from her eyes. He saw them, and wiping them away, he said:
“The hardest part of all to me is the knowledge that you must suffer, too. Forgive me for saying it, but as I know that I love you, so by similar signs I know that you love me. Is it not so, darling?”
Involuntarily she laid her head upon his bosom, sobbing:
“I have loved you so long—so long.”
But for her promise to Alice she would then have told him all, but she must keep her word, and when he rejoined, “It does, indeed seem long since that night you came to Riverside,” she did not undeceive him, but listened while he continued, “Bless you for telling me of your love. When you are gone it will be a comfort for me to think that Marian Grey once loved me. I say once for you must overcome that love. You must tear it out and trample it beneath your feet. You can if you try. You are not as hard, as callous as I am. My heart is like adamant, and though I know that it is wicked to love you, and to tell you of my love, I cannot help it. I am a wretch, and when I tell you, as I must, just what a wretch I am, it will help you to forget me—to hate me, it may be. You have heard of my wife. You know she left me on my bridal night, and I have never known the joys of wedded bliss—never shall know, for even if she comes back to me now, I cannot live with her!”
“Oh, Frederic!” And again the hot tears trembled through the hands which Marian clasped before her eyes.
“Don’t call me thus,” said Frederic, entreatingly, as he removed her hands, and held them both in his. “Don’t say Frederic, for though it thrills me with strange joy to hear you, it is not right. Listen, Marian, while I tell you why I married her who bears your name, and then I’m sure you’ll hate me—nor call me Frederic again. I have never told but one, and that one, William Gordon. I had thought never to tell it again, but it is right that you should know. Marian Lindsey was, or is, the Heiress of Redstone Hall. All my boasted wealth is hers—every cent of it is hers. But she didn’t know it, for”—and Frederic’s voice was very low and plaintive now as he told to Marian Grey how Marian Lindsey was an heiress—told her of his dead parent’s fraud—of his desire to save that parent’s name from disgrace, and his stronger desire to save him from poverty. “So I made her my wife,” he said. “I promised to love and cherish her all the time my heart was longing for another.”
Marian trembled now, as she lay helpless in his arms, and, observing it, he continued:
“I must confess the whole, and tell you that I loved, or thought I loved, Isabel Huntington, though how I could have fancied her is a mystery to me now. My poor Marian was plain, while Isabel was beautiful, and naught but Alice kept me from telling her my love. Alice stayed the act—Alice sent me to New York to look for Marian——”
“And did you never hear from her? Did she never send you a letter?” Marian asked, and he replied: