“He wished to do so as soon as we were married, for boy as he was, he had a man’s intelligent and delicate sense of honor. He wished to do so, but I was afraid to consent. We were married nearly a month before he sailed; and every day he pleaded with me to let him confess his marriage; but the very idea of doing so frightened and distressed me so much that he would yield the point.” “Fatal timidity on your side—fatal compliance on his!” sighed the commodore. “I told you just now not to reproach yourself. I beg you now not to reproach me, for I have already suffered the bitter fruits of my cowardice, nor _him_, for he has passed beyond our judgment,” solemnly replied Emolyn. “My child, I am not reproaching—I am only lamenting!” “That, too, is vain.” “I know it; yet, oh, how differently all this might have ended had he but confessed your marriage even at the last moment!” “He was in honor bound to me _not_ to do so. At the very last moment he implored me to release him from his promise and allow him to tell you and his mother and leave me under your protection. But I was afraid to consent and sent him away sorrowing.” “Poor boy! Poor boy! Yet he did what he could. He _did_ invoke my protection for you, Emolyn, although he was not permitted to use the argument that would have bound you to us by owning you as his wife. Ah, what a misfortune!” “But I must tell you what more he did, that you may know how thoughtful, how loving, how earnest he was. On the last night he stayed in his own home he spent the hours which should have been given to sleep in writing a long letter of confession to you, telling you all the circumstances attending our marriage, and invoking your pardon of him and protection of me. This letter he inclosed in one to me, in which he besought me to seek your presence at once; or, if I could not summon courage to do so, at least to keep the inclosed letter carefully, so that I might be able to present it to you in case I should ever stand in need of your friendship——” “Where is that letter? Where? Why, oh, why, my child, did you never deliver it to me?” impetuously demanded the commodore. “At first I was afraid. Afterward, when the greater terror overcame the less, I looked for my precious parcel and could not find it. My cabinet had been rifled of that and of all my correspondence—of everything, indeed, that could have afforded the slightest circumstantial evidence to the truth of my marriage.” “Who was the thief? Who?” indignantly demanded the veteran. “I have no positive knowledge, and I have no right to speak of my suspicions,” replied Emolyn. “Oh, my child! If, even without those proofs, you could have summoned resolution to have come to me and told the whole story!” sighed Commodore Bruce. “Are you sure that you would have believed me? Yet at one time I had resolved to make a full disclosure of my relations to you.”