“True! I have forgotten; I am bewildered; I am nearly _crazed_ with my misery. But, George, that fact can be no longer concealed; you must return with me to Richmond and confess our marriage to papa. I must be owned as a lawful wife before another day passes,” she said, wearily, yet with decision. “Impossible, Marion!” “And why impossible?” she demanded, with flashing eyes. “Do you understand that the secret _cannot_ be kept any longer—that it must be confessed at once?” “Nevertheless it _is_ impossible! I—I regret that there should be anything unpleasant about the matter; but I cannot go with you to Mr. Vance and tell him that you are my wife, simply because, Marion, _you are not my wife_!” he concluded, with a sigh of relief that the truth was at last out. “_George!_ why _will_ you jest thus when I am so miserable?” shrieked the unhappy girl, throwing up her arms with a gesture of despair. She could not believe that he spoke the truth, and yet there was something horribly real about it all. George Sumner looked uneasily around at that outburst. It would not do to have the whole house know that a young and beautiful girl had sought him there at that time of night. He went to her side and seized her firmly by the wrists. “Be still, Marion,” he said, angrily, “and listen to me, and do not make another sound while you are here, unless you intend to ruin us both.” She looked at him with hollow, bewildered eyes, too miserable and stunned by his words and manner to hardly comprehend what he was saying. “When I went down to Rye last summer,” he resumed, coldly, and with a determined air, “I went merely to have a jolly good time. I found a lot of pretty girls there, and I joined their set and met you, and had not then the slightest intention of doing you any wrong. You were young, gay, and pretty, and I made love to you, as I have done to a dozen others before. On the impulse of the moment I proposed a secret marriage, not having the least idea that you would consent to it; but you did, and I found myself in a fix. I _could_ not marry you in good faith, for the girl whom I marry must have plenty of money and an established position in the world; you had neither, and I had to get out of the scrape I was in as best I could.” Marion Vance here opened her lips with sudden eagerness, as if to speak, then as suddenly closed them again, and a strange look of fire and scorn mingled with the bitterness and pain in her eyes. “But,” he went on, not noticing it, too intent upon getting the scene over with as soon as possible, “when you accepted my proposal I had to do _something_; so I got a friend of mine to disguise himself to look like the old rector of St. John’s chapel, and, by bribing the sexton, he allowed us to go into the church for the ceremony to be performed.” “And _that_ was the way you married me—_me!_” she whispered, in suppressed tones, never once having taken her eyes from his during the horrible recital.