'How should it?' returned Mr. Hunter, feeling himself compelled to answer. 'I do not know how,' said the doctor, 'any more than I know how the impression, that he did, fixed itself upon me. I have felt sure, this many a year past, that he was no stranger to the fact, though he probably knew nothing of the details.' To the fact! Dr. Bevary spoke with strange coolness. 'When did _you_ become acquainted with it?' asked Mr. Hunter, in a tone of sharp pain. 'I became acquainted with your share in it at the time Miss Gwinn discovered that Mr. Lewis was Mr. Hunter. At least, with as much of the share as I ever was acquainted with until to-day.' Mr. Hunter compressed his lips. It was no use beating about the bush any longer. 'James,' resumed the doctor, 'why did you not confide the secret to me? It would have been much better.' 'To you! Louisa's brother!' 'It would have been better, I say. It might not have lifted the sword that was always hanging over Louisa's head, or have eased it by one jot; but it might have eased _you_. A sorrow kept within a man's own bosom, doing its work in silence, will burn his life away: get him to talk of it, and half the pain is removed. It is also possible that I might have made better terms than you, with the rapacity of Gwinn.' 'If you knew it, why did you not speak openly to me?' Dr. Bevary suppressed a shudder. 'It was one of those terrible secrets that a third party cannot interfere in uninvited. No: silence was my only course, so long as you observed silence to me. Had I interfered, I might have said "Louisa shall leave you!"' 'It is over, so far as she is concerned,' said Mr. Hunter, wiping his damp brow. 'Let her name rest. It is the thought of her that has well nigh killed me.' 'Ay, it's over,' responded Dr. Bevary; 'over, in more senses than one. Do you not wonder that Miss Gwinn should have gone back to Ketterford without molesting you again?' 'How can I wonder at anything she does? She comes and she goes, with as little reason as warning.' Dr. Bevary lowered his voice. 'Have you ever been to see that poor patient in Kerr's asylum?' The question excited the anger of Mr. Hunter. 'What do you mean by asking it?' he cried. 'When I was led to believe her dead, I shaped my future course according to that belief. I have never acted, nor would I act, upon any other--save in the giving money to Gwinn, for my wife's sake. If Louisa was not my wife legally, she was nothing less in the sight of God.' 'Louisa was your wife,' said Dr. Bevary, quietly. And Mr. Hunter responded by a sharp gesture of pain. He wished the subject at an end. The doctor continued-- 'James, had you gone, though it had been but for an instant, to see that unhappy patient of Kerr's, your trammels would have been broken. It was not Emma, your young wife of years ago.' 'It was not!----What do you say?' gasped Mr. Hunter.