"I must speak," she began again hurriedly. "If I do not tell you now, the resolution may go. When I saw my darling lie there, at the very gate of death, I knew it was a judgment upon me for my long silence--my criminal silence." She paused, as if scarcely able to continue. She was weeping bitterly, and her restless fingers pulled to pieces a rose that she had plucked from a bush as she passed. "I hardly know how to explain everything," she went on at last, "but perhaps it will make it clearer if I begin at the beginning, and relate the story of my life. Have you the patience to hear it? My sister Madeleine and I were twins. My mother died in our infancy, and left no other children, so we two were everything to each other. My father was a clever but eccentric man, a student and an astronomer. He had never been fond of company, and after my mother's death he shut himself up more closely than ever, and became quite a recluse, devoting himself entirely to his books and his telescope. Though he was fond of us in his way, we did not see much of him, and he was always so reserved and silent that we were shy and constrained in his presence. When we were old enough to leave school, our life at home, in a remote country grange, with little society to be had in the neighbourhood, was dull and triste in the extreme. Just after our twenty-first birthday, we made the acquaintance of two brothers who were staying at a house in the adjoining parish, and the friendship soon ripened into a warmer feeling on both sides. "David Clarke, the elder, fell in love with my sister Madeleine, and Herbert, the younger, with myself. When we broached the subject to my father, however, he professed great indignation, and forbade either of the young Clarkes to come to the house. It was extremely arbitrary and unjust of him to behave thus, for he had no reasonable objections to raise against them. I can only imagine that he was annoyed that he had not been taken earlier into our confidence, and hurt that we wished to leave him. Perhaps, also, he may have had some other matrimonial projects in his mind for us, though he never made the slightest attempt to introduce us to any suitable friends. Can you imagine the situation? Two impulsive, motherless girls in the lonely old house, with no one to counsel us or help to smooth away any of our difficulties! Our lovers had business in India, and were shortly leaving the country; and the idea of parting from them was terrible to us. They pleaded and urged, so what wonder that there were clandestine meetings, and that one morning we took the law into our own hands and made a double runaway match of it? We were both of age, and could therefore legally marry whom we chose.