He laid his mouth upon hers, and kissed her as warmly in return as ever he had done in the days gone by. ‘Thank God, it is not true!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, my poor Nell, I have suffered hell in thinking you had died by your own hand for my sake.’ ‘I, too, have been in hell,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Vernie, why did you leave me? I loved you so.’ ‘I was a brute,’ replied the earl, ‘an ungrateful, selfish brute; but I will make you amends for it, if I die.’ What amends could he make her, except by giving her back the love he had seemed to withdraw? Nell thought of no other; she would have accepted no other. She held her heaven in her arms now--and all the troubles of life had faded away. ‘Your love, your love! I only want your love, Vernie,’ she whispered. ‘You have it, darling. You always had it,’ replied Ilfracombe, as he gazed at the lovely face upturned to his in the moonlight. ‘But how thin and pale you are, Nell. You are not like the same girl. What has happened, dear, to change you so?’ ‘I have been ill, Vernie’ answered Nell. ‘I have had a bad fever, and my trouble has done the rest. I have had no peace--no hope without you. I have been unable to eat or sleep. How could I, knowing you had given me up? Oh, Vernie, why didn’t you kill me first? It would have been so much kinder.’ Lord Ilfracombe groaned. ‘God forgive me! I never saw what I had done before this night. Nell, will you ever forgive me, or forget my base ingratitude to you, who were always so good to me? How can you say you love me? A man like myself is unworthy of any woman’s love. You ought by rights to loathe and execrate my very name.’ ‘But I don’t--I don’t. I love you still with all my heart and soul. Oh, Vernie, I was so wretched, so miserable, when I came out to walk to-night, and now I’m as happy as the day is long. You love me still. That is all I want to know.’ ‘But that won’t rectify the great wrong I have done you, Nell. That won’t replace you in the position my selfishness hurled you from. You forget--perhaps you don’t know--that I am--married.’ Nell drew herself a little away from him. ‘Oh, yes, I know it,’ she said in a low voice; ‘but if you love me, Vernie, I have the best part of you still.’ Lord Ilfracombe did not know what to answer. The great emotion--the surprise, almost the shock of finding that Nell still lived, was over now in a great measure, and he had time to remember his wife and how much he loved her (as he had never, even in the flush of his first passion, loved the poor girl before him), and what _she_ would think if she could see and hear him now. The disloyalty of which he was guilty struck him like a cold chill. Was he fated never to be true to any one woman? He relaxed the tight hold he had maintained on Nell, and putting her a little away from him, said gently,-- ‘I do love you, my dear; I shall always love you and remember the time we spent together; but my marriage, you see, will prevent my showing it as I used to do.’