“It is you who are mistaken,” he said in a very unsteady voice. “There is an impassable barrier between us, I repeat, in the shape of--my wife. I am now married.” Queenie’s eyes almost start from their sockets, the shock and the horror of his words affect her so terribly. He is married! She wonders that those words did not strike her dead. She stands for a moment looking at him like one bidding a last farewell to life, hope, and the world. “You are married?” she gasps again. “Oh, my God! my punishment is more than I can bear!” and she sinks on the floor at his feet with a piteous moan, burying her face in her hands and weeping as women seldom weep in a lifetime. It was not in human nature to see the woman whom he still loved so madly lying there weeping for love of him, without his heart being stirred to its utmost, and John Dinsmore was human enough to feel the warm blood dashing madly through his veins and his heart, beating violently with all the old love reawakening. He turns and walks excitedly up and down the length of the long drawing-room, his arms folded tightly over his heaving chest. “Then, if you did not come here to see me, and did not know I was now a widow, why are you here?” cried Queenie, at length, standing before him with a death-white face, a strange suspicion dawning in her breast. “I am here to see my wife, who is beneath this roof,” he answered, huskily. “My wife is little Jess, but as she was bound to secrecy concerning it, I can see that she has not told you.” CHAPTER XXXIX. A TEST OF LOVE. “Let no one say that there is need Of time for love to grow. Ah, no, the love that kills, indeed, Dispatches at a blow.” “Jess is your wife!” repeated Queenie, in a voice so hollow and deathlike that it might have come from the tomb. John Dinsmore bowed his head in assent, and as he did so, his companion detected a shadow of bitterness in his eyes, and a whitening of his face. “What to you seems so strange can be explained in a very few words, if you care to hear that explanation,” he said, slowly. Queenie bowed her head eagerly. Like him, words seemed to fail her. She sank into the nearest chair, pointing to one opposite her, but he declined the proffered seat, remarking that, “with her permission, he would prefer standing.” For some moments he stood leaning against the marble mantel ere he could control himself sufficiently to tell his story. Then he began almost abruptly: “When you knew me at Newport, I told you that I was simply John Dinsmore, Author, Bohemian. I did not add that I was the last of kin of a wealthy uncle who had always told me that I should be his heir, for I despise men who live in expectancy of falling into dead men’s shoes, and getting the good out of fortunes which other men have toiled for. I depended upon myself and my own achievements for getting along in the world.