"Hush! I will not have you say those words! We both know--if we are to speak of the past--that it was an honorable contest enough--a fair fight--a meeting such as no man of honor could refuse. You would have fallen if he had not. It is purely morbid, this brooding over the consequences of your actions. Everybody who knew the circumstances would have said that you were in the right. I say it myself, although at my own cost. To marry Enid now because she loves you will be the only way you can take to repair the harm that was done in the past and to shield her for the future." It was not often that Florence spoke so long or so energetically; and Hubert, in spite of his revolt of feeling at the prospect held out to him, was impressed by her words. After a few moments' silence, he sat down again and began to argue the matter with her from every possible point of view. He told her it was probable that Enid did not know her own mind; that she would be miserable if she married a man who could not love her; that the whole world would cry shame on him if it ever learned the circumstances of her father's death; that Enid herself would be the first to reproach him, and would indeed bitterly hate him if she ever knew. "If she ever knew--if the world ever knew!" said Florence scornfully. Hitherto she had been very quiet and let her brother say his say. "As if she or the world were ever going to know! There is no way in which the truth can be known unless one of us tells it; and I ask you, is that a thing that either of us is very likely to do? It would mean social ruin for us--utter and irretrievable ruin! If we only hold our tongues, Enid and the world will never know." "That is true," he answered moodily; and then he sat so long in one position, with his arms crossed on his breast; and his eyes fixed on vacancy, that Florence asked him with some curiosity of what he was thinking. "I was wondering," he said, "whether that poor wretch Westwood found his undeserved punishment more galling than I sometimes find the bonds of secrecy and falsehood and dishonor that bind me now. He at any rate has gained his freedom; but I am in bondage still. I have my sentence--a life sentence--to work out." "He is free now, certainly," Florence answered, with an odd intonation of her voice; "so I do not think that you need trouble yourself about him. Think of Enid rather, and of her needs." "Free? Yes--he is dead," said Hubert quickly, replying to something in her tone rather than to her words. "He died as I told you--some time ago." "You read it in the newspaper?" "Yes." "And you never saw that next day the report of his death was contradicted?" "Florence, what do you mean?"