"Would you be willing to marry a woman whose name is irretrievably linked with disgrace?" Mr. Abbot asked, while cold perspiration started out upon his forehead, and his face was almost convulsed with his anguish of mind.
He knew that Virgie had grown to love this man. He was conscious of the pride and prejudices of the English aristocracy, and he believed that when he should tell the story of his life, as he knew it was only right he should do, Sir William Heath would no longer care to make his daughter his wife, and her heart would be broken.
Sir William looked up, startled at this question, his own face paling suddenly.
"Surely, Mr. Abbot, you cannot mean anything so bad as that," he replied, in a low, pained tone.
"I will tell you all about it," said the sick man, "and then you must decide for yourself whether you are still willing to wed the daughter of a dishonored man. Of course you have seen from the beginning of your acquaintance with us that no pleasure or profit that might accrue to us from this kind of a life could ever reconcile us to it; that only some terrible misfortune could have driven me and my beautiful darling into such a wild and desolate region as this."
"Yes; I have felt that there was something mysterious in your being here—some secret reason why you should have shut yourselves away from all comfort and civilization," Sir William admitted, as his companion paused for strength to go on. "But I have never attributed it to any willful wrong on your part."
"Thank you for your faith in me," returned Mr. Abbot, gratefully. "I only wish the world at large was as charitable; if it had been, I need not have been here now, on the verge of the grave, nor been obliged to doom my lonely child to a life of exile, when everything should be at the brightest for her; neither should we have been obliged to disown a name which, until recently had always been an honored and respected one".
"Then your name is not Abbot," said Sir William.
"Yes, but that is not the whole of it; I will, however, confide that to you later. But of course I tell you this in strictest confidence; whatever your decision may be after you hear my story, I charge you not to betray me to any one."
"You may trust me," said the young man, quietly.