Naked he laid his sin out before her—naked as the new-born child, and yet he prayed her not to look askance upon it, but to pity and forgive. Well he understood—this man to whom the world and its ways were roads he knew from beginning to end, from the first chapter to the last—that to the woman whom he addressed the book of sin was almost as a dead letter, as a language unlearned, as a science incomprehensible. Passion died out in her presence, vice found no defence sustainable when pleaded before that calm, impartial judge. She could not go with him in his agony of love, of struggling virtue, of wicked strategy, of unavailing repentance—she, whose life had never known the rush and tumult of an overpowering affection, who had never been adored, idolized, wronged, by any man, as it was in Douglas Croft’s nature to adore, idolize, and wrong,—she, who was pure in thought and deed, pure almost as one of God’s angels—how could he tell her of the over-mastering love which had overleapt all boundaries of prudence, all restraints of society, all divine laws, all human restrictions? But he could appeal to her pity, and to her generosity. He could lay his future at her feet, and pray her to do with it as she would; to give him Bessie’s address, if it came to her knowledge, or to withhold it; to mention his name to Bessie, or to preserve silence concerning him; to say, if Bessie ever wrote or came near, or to ignore her existence, as she pleased—as she deemed best. “I make no conditions, I ask no mercy, Mrs. Dudley,” he said. “I place myself in your hands; and I merely entreat that you will do whatever seems to you best, regardless of my feelings. If I could only know she is living!” he added. “She is living,” Heather interrupted. “Then you have seen her!” he said, eagerly; “is she in London?” “You must not question me,” Mrs. Dudley replied. “All I can tell you is—that—the girl, whose future you have made so wretched, is living. The greatest kindness you can do her now is to forget that such a person ever existed. I will keep this money, if you wish, in case she should ever really be in want of it. At present, I know, she would not take sixpence from you, and I cannot wonder at, her feeling as she does towards you.” “Then you have seen her?” he inquired. “Yes, and talked with her; and guessed who stole her from us—stole her away to shame, and grief, and suffering——” At that point he interrupted her, vehemently, “Why should she be ashamed,” he asked, “for that which was no fault of hers? and was she not better, as she lived with me, believing herself to be a wife, than legally married to Harcourt—a man for whom she never cared two straws? Is not anything, any sin, any disgrace, any suffering, preferable to a loveless marriage? Answer me, truly, Mrs. Dudley,” he persisted; “do you not believe it is?”