"Dear," he said, "from the time you first noticed me, when you were a sweet child of seven summers and I a boy of twelve--yes, winters--for while all your years had been summers, dear--summers of love, shelter, comfort, luxury--all my years had been winters of loss, want, orphanage, and destitution--you were my help, support, inspiration. I longed to be worthy of your friendship, your interest, your sympathy. And for all these things I toiled, endured, and struggled." "I know! Oh, I know!" said Corona, earnestly. "Yes, dear, you know it all. For who but you were with me in the spirit through all the struggle, helping, supporting, encouraging, until you seemed to me my muse, my soul, my inner and purer and higher self. Dear, I wronged you when I connected your love with this world's pride. I wronged you bitterly, and I have suffered for it and made you suffer--" "Oh, no, no, no, Rule! The fault was all my own! I am not so good and wise as you!" exclaimed Corona. "Hush, dear! Hush! Hear me out!" said Rothsay, laying his hand gently on her head. "Well, go on, but don't blame yourself. Oh, '_chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_,'" said Corona, fervently. He resumed very quietly: "When I had reached a position in this world's honor to which I dared to invite you, then I laid my victory at your feet and prayed you to share it. And, Corona, when the bishop had blessed our nuptials, I dreamed that we were blessed indeed. You know, dear, what a miserable awakening I had from that dream on the evening of our wedding day." "It was my fault! It was my fault! Oh, vain, foolish, infatuated woman that I was!" cried Corona. "No, dear; you were not to blame. You were true, candid, natural through it all. Our betrothal, dear, was on your part the betrothal of friends. You did not know your own heart then. You went abroad with your grandparents, and, after two years of travel, you were thrown in the court circles of London, and exposed to all the splendors, temptations and fascinations of rank, culture and refinement, such as you had never met at home in your rural neighborhood. You were caught, dazzled, bewildered. You thought you loved the English duke who sought your hand--" "But I never did, Rule. Oh, Heaven knows I never did. It was all self-delusion," broke in Corona. "No; you never did. I saw that in the first instant that I met your eyes in the log cabin up yonder. You never did! It was a self-delusion. Yet you were under the influence of that self-delusion when I found you on our wedding evening in such a paroxysm of grief and despair that I--astonished and amazed at what I saw--shared your delusion and imagined that you loved this duke when you married me. What could I do, my own dear Cora, for whom I would have lived or died at bidding--what could I do but efface myself from your life?"