“Yes, my wife.”
“And what was her answer?” he asked dryly, in a changed tone.
“She has consented.”
“Mr. Biddulph,” he said very gravely, looking straight into my face, “this must never be! Have I not already told you the ghastly truth?—that there is a secret—an unmentionable secret——”
“A secret concerning her!” I cried. “What is it? Come, Mr. Shuttleworth, you shall tell me, I demand to know!”
“I can only repeat that between you and Sylvia Pennington there still lies the open gulf—and that gulf is, indeed, the grave. In your ignorance of the strange but actual facts you do not realize your own dread peril, or you would never ask her to become your wife. Abandon all thought of her, I beg of you,” he urged earnestly. “Take this advice of mine, for one day you will assuredly thank me for my counsel.”
“I love her with all the strength of my being, and for me that is sufficient,” I declared.
“Ah!” he cried in despair as he paced the room. “To think of the irony of it all! That you should actually woo her—of all women!” Then, halting before me, his eye grew suddenly aflame, he clenched his hands and cried: “But you shall not! Understand me, you shall hate her; you shall curse her very name. You shall never love her—never—I, Edmund Shuttleworth, forbid it! It must not be!”
At that instant the frou-frou of a woman’s skirts fell upon my ears, and, turning quickly, I saw Sylvia herself standing at the open French windows.
Entering unobserved she had heard those wild words of the rector’s, and stood pale, breathless, rigid as a statue.