"Then you will let him stay?" Her white brow dropped caressingly against him.
"Of course!—if he will only accept my father's conditions," he said, unwillingly, hating to see her bright look darkening.
She straightened herself.
"If they separate, you mean?"
"I'm afraid that's what they ought to do."
"But it would break their hearts."
He threw her a sudden flashing look, as though a sword gleamed.
"It would make amends."
"For what they have done? But they don't feel like that!" she pleaded, her color rising. "They think themselves properly married, and that no one has a right to interfere with them. And when the law says so too, Edward?—Won't everybody think it very hard?"
"Yes, we shall be blamed," he said, quietly. "But don't you see, dearest, that, if they stay, we seem to condone the marriage, to say that it doesn't matter,—what they have done?—when in truth it seems to us a black offense—"