There was a humming in his ears, and he could not hear the December storm beating against the windows, and there was a mist before his eyes, so that he could not see the paper he held in his trembling hand. Nor was vision longer needful to him. He had read and re-read, and the lines had burned themselves into his brain word for word, and even with his eyes shut he could see the sentence, “_Abelard Lyle_, your hired workman, was my husband, and I was _Heloise Fordham_, who lived in the cottage by the bridge at Hampstead.” “_Abelard Lyle her husband!_,” he tried to say, but his lips only gave a sound which made him shiver and wonder if he was dying, it was so unnatural, so like the cry of an animal wounded and in mortal agony. And he was wounded, sorely, and every nerve quivered with pain, and he could feel the hot blood surging through his veins as he had felt it once when under the influence of ether. Then he had fought and struck at the dentist operating on him, and acted like a madman. But he did not do so now. He neither fought nor struck, but sat motionless, thinking of the words, “Abelard Lyle was my husband, and I was Heloise Fordham.” He remembered that young girl, remembered the face framed in the green leaves, and the clear voice telling him Abelard’s name and place of birth. He remembered, too, that people had said the young man was her lover, and how suddenly she disappeared with her mother. And Edith, his Edith, the woman he loved so much, was _that girl_!—was Abelard’s wife, and the mother of his child, and had married him without telling him a word of the real truth as written in this letter! There had been a show of sincerity, and that was all. She had at first meant to tell him, but had changed her mind and given him no hint of the actual state of things. She had really come to him stained with falsehood and treachery and deceit, a lie on her lips, a lie in her heart, and a lie in every act of hers, since her beautiful head was first pillowed on his bosom. Oh, what bitter things he thought against her in the first moments of surprise and anguish I How black the record was, and how he shrank from ever looking in her face again, as he thought of the imposition practised upon him. “Oh, Edith! Edith! I loved you so much, and thought you so innocent and pure. I can never trust you again, or take you for my wife,” he said, when his lips could frame his thoughts into words, and his heart was hardening like adamant against the woman who had so deceived him, when the door was pushed cautiously open, and little Arthur came in, blowing his whistle vigorously at first, and then staring wonderingly at his father’s white, haggard face.