"No, no; to-day, this very day have I been watching and waiting. Oh! why did you not come back? Why did you not come back, Robert, so that I might have told you?" "You dared not," he said, sternly. "Oh, yes! I dared. I have done no sin, only deceived you, Robert, at--at first." "Only at first. Only for ever." "No, no; not for ever. I always meant to tell you, I did, indeed, Robert." She began to fear he distrusted her words already--she, whose very "yes" had been implicitly believed and reverenced. Alas! this first sin, perhaps the only one, into what meshes it leads us, often bringing terrible retribution. "Did you not fear living on in--in deceit?" he said. "Did you not feel how near you were to my heart--did you not know that my love for you was--was madness? that, lonely and unloved, I loved you with all the passion of my nature? If not, you knew that all my devotion was thrown away--utterly wasted--that your heart was another's, and could never be mine." He stopped; and the silence was unbroken, save by Amy's sobs. "Had you told me this," he said again, "do you think I would have brought this great sorrow upon you? put trouble and fear into your heart instead of love and happiness, and made your young life desolate--desolate and unbearable, but for the boy. He is the one green leaf in your path, I the withered one,--withered at heart and soul." "Robert! Robert! don't be so hard, so--so--" she could not bring to her lips to say cruel, "but forgive me!" He heeded her not, but went on. "And the day of your marriage," he said, "that day which should have been, and I fondly hoped was, the happiest day of your life; upon that day, of all others, you saw him." "Not wilfully, Robert, not--not wilfully," sobbed Amy. "That day, your marriage day, was the one on which you first learnt of _his_ love for you, and passed in one short half hour a whole lifetime of agony. Poor Amy! poor wife! Forgive you? yes; my heart is pitying enough and weak enough to forgive you your share in my misery for the sake of the anguish of your own." Amy only wept on. She could not answer. But he, her husband, needed no reply; her very silence, her utter grief and tears confirmed all he said. "Amy, did you never think the knowledge of all this--the tale would break my heart?" "Never! I feared your anger, your sorrowing looks, but--but that?--Never, never!" "And yet it will be so. It must be so." "Oh, no, no! Neither now nor ever, because--because I love you, Robert."