"He began to pity her, for he also was beginning to realize that, if Isabel Stewart were really the woman whom he had wronged more than twenty years previous, her situation was indeed deplorable.
"Anna," he said, gravely, and speaking with more calmness and gentleness than at any time during the interview, "this is a stern fact, and—we must look it in the face."
His tone and manner carried conviction to her heart.
She sank crouching at his feet, bowing her face upon her hands.
"Gerald! Gerald! it must not be so!" she wailed. "It is only some cunning story invented to cheat us and avenge her. That woman shall never separate us—I will never yield to her. Oh, Heaven! why did I not destroy that paper when I had it? Gerald, give it to me now, if you have it; it is not too late to burn it even now, and no one can prove the truth—we can defy her to the last."
The man stooped to raise her from her humiliating position.
"Get up, Anna," he said, kindly. "Come, sit in this chair and let us talk the matter over calmly. It is a stern fact that Isabel is alive and well, and it is useless either to ignore it or deplore it."
With shivering sobs bursting from her with every breath, the wretched woman allowed herself to be helped to the chair, into which she sank with an air of abject despair.
Anna Goddard's was not a nature likely to readily yield to humiliation or defeat, and after a few moments of silent battle with herself, she raised her head and turned her proud face and searching eyes upon her companion.
"You say that it is a 'stern fact' that Isabel lives," she remarked, with compressed lips.