He liked to say “my wife,” and kept repeating the name as if it would make her dearer to him, and wipe out every feeling of regret for the incidents of her early life. How she has suffered, he thought, as he remembered all she must have passed through after her arrival at Hampstead, and he could understand now the meaning of her strange words when their first baby was born, and when it died. She was thinking of the little girl whose grave she never saw, and in the transports of his joy and generosity the poor man thought how he would, if she wished it, help her find that grave, and place a headstone there to the memory of little Heloise Lyle! Nobody would ever connect that name with him or his, and he was glad of that, and was not sorry that the little girl was dead, and could not by any chance come up as a witness against his Edith. Alas, he never dreamed that only half the strange story had been told, that his love and generosity, and principle of right and wrong were to be more severely tested than they yet had been. He was human, and naturally it was a comfort to him to think that Edith’s story need be known only to her and to himself. It should be their secret, and die with them when they died, and the world never be the wiser for it. That the secret had something to do with Edith’s recent dangerous illness, he was certain, when he recalled expressions and ravings which had puzzled him so much; and he knew, too, or thought he did, why she shrank from him as she always did when delirious, telling him she was unworthy to let him touch her. But this should be so no longer; he would go home to her at once, and as soon as she could bear it, tell her that he knew the whole, and loved her the same as ever. He did not stop long after that, but calling for his bill, hurried to the station and was soon on his way to Schuyler Hill. CHAPTER LIV. HUSBAND AND WIFE. He found his wife asleep, with her cheek resting on one hand, her hair pushed back and lying in masses upon the pillow. He had seen her thus many times, and he paused to look at her now, and thought how fair and lovely she was even yet, with her thirty-four years and the marks of her dangerous illness. Hers was a face which does not grow old, and to him it seemed more beautiful than it had been on her bridal day, because he loved her more than he did then, and knew how sweet she was. He did not associate her in the least with Abelard Lyle when he was with her. It was some other Edith who had been the heroine of that strange romance,—it was Heloise Fordham, the girl at the cottage, who had shed such bitter tears for the young carpenter, and not his wife, lying there before him in that quiet sleep. She was Edith,—the mother of his little boy, and he stooped at last and kissed her just as tenderly as if that letter had never been read by him, and he had never heard of the Lyles who lived in Alnwick.