Then he looked at her, and there was great pain in his eyes and on his pale face. "I should rather be dead--I swear it, though you may not believe it--than say to you what I am forced to say to-day." "Oh! you frighten me! What can it be?" cried May. "Do you remember when--when I went away and left you, May," went on John Temple, in a broken voice; "when I wrote to you and told you that you were to be quite sure of your feelings toward me if I were to be anything more to you; when I told you that I believed that if two people truly loved each other that nothing should part or change them?" "I remember," answered May, lifting her head and looking with steadfast eyes in his face, "when you wrote that there were other feelings between men and women besides the love that can not change, and that I was to question my heart. I did--I told you then my love could never change, and now I tell you again--it can never change." "My darling!" He caught her to his breast, he kissed her eyes, her lips, her brow, and then in hurried, agitated words he tried to tell her all. "May, I loved you then, and I love you now, how dearly none but my own heart can tell--but I should have told you the truth. I told you there were obstacles to our marriage, and that it must be a secret one, and you agreed to this. Our secret is now known. Mrs. Temple, my uncle's wife, it seems, saw one of your letters to me, and she actually sent that brute, young Henderson, up to town to spy on you. He saw you enter Miss Webster's house, and he went back and told your father." "Oh! John!" cried May. "My uncle sent for me this morning, and questioned me, but I would tell him nothing; and while I was with him your father and young Henderson arrived at the Hall. Your father asked me if I were married to you, and I refused to tell him also, and then when Henderson spoke I called him a murderer and a spy. He sprang at me and struck me, but with one blow I sent him reeling to the floor, and when I left Woodlea he had not recovered his senses." May gave a sort of cry. "And--and what followed?" she gasped out. "Then I left Woodlea. I was determined to see you first before I said a word to one of them--for, May, it was not for fear of my uncle's anger that I wished our marriage to be a secret one--but there was another reason--" "Another reason?" echoed May, with fast whitening lips. "Yes, when I was a boy, a mere lad at least, I met a woman older than myself; a woman who took advantage of my boyish infatuation, and led me on to do what I have cursed ever since I met you. May, do not look so white! My dear one, this need not, shall not, part us. Our love is too deep and strong for a tie, broken years ago, to come between us. But in an hour of madness, I married--" May started back as if she had received a sudden blow. "I married," went on John Temple, nerving himself to speak the words, "the actress, Kathleen Weir--"