"My dear husband," said she, withdrawing her hand, "I am not worthy that you should treat me so kindly: I have a dreadful secret to unfold to you, which I feel I have kept from you too long."
"A secret!" exclaimed her husband, rising hastily, "I tell you I don't like secrets: everything right and straight and above-board—that's my plan! I don't want to hear any secrets! Who says that my wife has been keeping a secret from me? I don't believe a word of it! Who says it, I should like to know? I'll have him strung up to the yard-arm!"
He seemed in such agitation, as he hurriedly paced the room, that his poor wife trembled for the result. She saw that a crisis was close at hand, and probably her happiness was gone for ever: but she had made up her mind to tell her secret, and she was determined to go through with it, let the consequences be what they would. So she asked her husband, in as calm a tone as she could command, to sit and listen for a few minutes to what she had to say, and then she should throw herself on his mercy, and would submit to any punishment he might think she deserved; but she begged him to hear her tale to the end before he judged her.
This serious appeal took the captain quite by surprise. He didn't know what to do or say, so he took a chair, and prepared for the worst.
With averted eyes, his guilty, trembling wife commenced her tale and told all: her former marriage, the birth of her daughter, and the concealment of the child by Miss Fisher: her treachery and heartless importunities for money, and threats: and, above all, her own weakness and guilt in keeping the secret from her good, kind husband.
When she had finished, she leaned her head on her hands, and burst into a torrent of tears. She had been keeping her feelings under control during the recital, that she might not interrupt the narrative which she had to relate. She could not restrain them any longer; and now she expected a terrible outburst of passion from her husband. The crisis was at hand. She waited the awful doom which she felt she deserved; but it did not come. She dared not look at her husband.
He had sat perfectly still and silent all the time she had been speaking, and after she had finished he was silent still. At length he rose, and approaching the couch seated himself by the side of his poor weeping, trembling wife; and, taking her hand as he had done before, he said,—"I knew my darling wife had no secrets that her husband was not cognizant of."
"No secrets!" she exclaimed, looking up in astonishment,—"I have been confessing the knowledge of a secret that I have been keeping from you for years and years, to my sorrow and shame!"
"I heard what you have been telling me," replied her husband, "but you have told me nothing that I didn't know before. Why I have known all that for years."
"You have known it!" exclaimed Mrs. Courland, in amazement. "How is it possible! Who can have told you!"