"Understand!" she hoarsely said. "If you cannot take me on trust, we had better part, we had better separate now, this very hour, and go our different ways----" "How dare you!" he cried; and almost fiercely, in his anguish to hear such a suggestion from her lips, he placed his hands on her shoulders, ruthlessly ignoring the bridal finery, and gazed into her strained eyes. "You are my wife! It is an insult to me, what you say! I am your husband." He took her peremptorily in his arms, and kissed her with mingled adoration and despair. The despair was involuntary--born of a huge misgiving that something was seriously wrong with his new-made wife, and that he had yet to learn what that something was. "And now, here we are at your home!" he tenderly said. "You must try and pretend to be the happy bride I hoped you were!" As he helped her to alight, and acting the part of the delighted, joyous bridegroom, led her through the little crowd of servants standing about the hall, acknowledging their murmur of congratulation, those melancholy words of his--so untrue in regard to her love for him--to her rejoicing in the midst of her misery that she was his wife--touched her to the quick. "My poor love!" she gasped, as soon as they were alone in the flower-bedecked drawing-room, throwing herself upon his breast, and gazing adoringly into his face. "I--I had not the courage to tell you before, but I must--now! I told you my unhappy friend was free, but I did not tell you how! Her husband was that man that died--that Victor Mercier! Perhaps she had something to do with his death! That is what has been eating my heart out--that I had had a hand in killing a fellow-creature--killing--depriving some one of life--oh, it is awful! Sometimes I feel that if that man were alive again, I would willingly die myself--give up all our happiness--leave you for ever! Now perhaps you can imagine what I have been suffering, and what I suffered at the theatre listening to that Mr. Hunt talking of the woman with the brandy-bottle, dreading lest he might be speaking of her--my poor miserable friend!" "My darling!" There was a world of compunction, tenderness, sympathy in his voice as he drew her down by him on a sofa, and lovingly clasped her cold, trembling hands in his. "But you ought to have told me before! I quite--see--all--now--and now I am to bear your troubles for you--troubles indeed, absurd cobwebs--trifles light as air! Your real trouble, my dearest, is being in possession of an over-sensitive conscience! Come--there is the first carriage--how quickly they have followed us up--try and look a little more as a bride ought to look. Your being pale doesn’t matter--brides seem to be given that way--but unhappy? For my sake, darling, try to look a little less as if you had just been condemned to death instead of to living your life with me!"