"What—what? you would not forsake me then?"
"Cain's wife forsook not her husband, and yet his crime was greater than anything you could ever have committed," she answered in a gentle, cheerful voice.
"True—true—true," hurriedly he replied, (but why had he been fool enough to put Cain into her head?)—"True, dear Mary, you are an angel, but then Cain's faithful friend was his wife. I meant, if before we were married, they tried to separate us by such measures,—or if for instance," he added quite cheerfully and naturally, "if, as you quite seem to think possible, I am sorry to perceive, I did turn out a villain."
"Then," Mary answered firmly and gravely, "the course of conduct I must pursue would be a question of right and wrong; it is difficult for me indeed, to realize to myself such a position of affairs; but I know—I feel," with a self-accusing sigh, "what my heart would at present dictate—that I could never of my own accord forsake you, Eugene—never could cancel the engagement which binds us to each other—unless indeed," she added, "you, Eugene, should desire it."
"I desire, it!" he repeated with a laugh of tender scorn, "what in the world could now arise to render our separation, for a day even, desirable in my eyes? No, the time will soon be here when, you know, Mary, what you have promised—that we shall never again be obliged to part."
Strange—strange world of contradiction; strange indeed, that in so very brief a space of time the same enthusiastic speaker should be the first—
But we must not anticipate.
CHAPTER II.
The nuptial day was fix'd, the plighting kiss
Glowed on my lips; that moment the abyss,
Which hid by moss-grown time yet yawned as wide
Beneath my feet, divorced me from her side.
A letter came—