“Never, never! and Henry, oh Henry!” she stretched her hands toward him now, and the expression of her white face was pitiful in the extreme; “whatever you do or make me suffer, don’t subject me to that; don’t let him know. I have lost him, but I cannot lose his esteem. Roy must not despise me. I wronged you once; I know I wronged you in the tenderest point where a woman can wrong a man, but I meant to be a good wife, and would have been if you had forgiven and tried me. You would not do that; you thrust me from you, and though I have seen much of prosperity, there has been a skeleton in every joy. I have been fearfully punished every way. Annie is dead, did you know that?” She said the last humbly, beseechingly, and a flush of red crept into her white face. “I supposed she was. I saw the name of Annie Heyford on a stone in Greenwood, close by Le Roy’s grave. And Mr. Leighton never knew of her either, I suppose?” “Not what she was to me. Nobody knows but Jack and you,” she answered mournfully, while a sudden flame of passion leaped into the one sound eye of the man beside her, as he said: “Up to your old tricks again, I see; marrying with a lie on your soul, just as you came to me.” She did not resent the taunt at all. She was too thoroughly crushed for that, and she answered gently, “Yes, I was going to do the same thing again. I am everything that is bad, I confess; but, oh, how could I tell, when all these years nobody has known, and I was so different, and the old life lay far behind, and I did love Roy. Oh, if I’ve sinned deeply, I am cruelly punished at the last. Think, Henry, to-morrow, ay, to-day, for it is to-morrow now, I was to have been his wife; everything is in readiness, the guests are here, and now it cannot be, and I,—oh, what reason can I give to Roy for holding back at the very altar?”