“Question me; it is your right, Philip,” she said, in a subdued tone, steadying her trembling frame in a sitting posture on the sofa. “Recline, Marguerite; repose yourself while we converse,” he said, for deeply displeased as he was, it moved his heart to see her sitting there so white and gaunt. She took him at his word and sank down with her elbow on the piled-up cushions, and her fingers run up through her lustrous tresses supporting her head, and repeated. “Question me, Philip, it is your right!” “I must go far back. The scene of this evening has awakened other recollections, not important by themselves, but foreboding, threatening, in connection with what has occurred to-night. I allude in the first place to those yearly migrations of yours that so puzzled your friends; will you now explain them to me?” “Philip, ask to take the living, beating heart from my bosom and you shall do it--but I cannot give you the explanation you desire,” she answered, in a mournful tone. “You cannot!” he repeated, growing white and speaking through his closed teeth. “I cannot, alas! Philip, it concerns another.” “Another! Man or woman?” “Neith--oh, Heaven, Philip, I cannot tell you!” “Very well,” he said, but there was that in his tone and manner that made his simple exclamation more alarming than the bitterest reproaches and threats could have been. “Philip! Philip! these things occurred before our engagement, and you heard of them. Forgive me for reminding you that you might have requested an explanation of them, and if refused, you might have withdrawn.” “No, Marguerite! I am amazed to hear you say so. I had no right then to question your course of conduct; it would have been an unpardonable insult to you to have done so; moreover, I thoroughly confided in the honor of a woman whom I found at the head of the best society, respected, flattered, followed, courted, as you were. I never could have foreseen that such a woman would bring into our married life an embarrassing mystery, which I beg her now to elucidate.” “Yet it is a pity, oh! what a pity that you had not asked this elucidation a year since!” exclaimed Marguerite, in a voice of anguish. “Why? Would you then have given it to me?” “Alas! no, for my power to do so was no greater then than now. But then, at least, on my refusal to confide this affair (that concerns others, Philip) to you, you might have withdrawn from me--now, alas! it is too late.” “Perhaps not,” remarked Mr. Helmstedt, in a calm, but significant tone. “My God! what mean you, Philip?” exclaimed his wife, starting up from her recumbent position. “To question you farther--that is all for the present.” She sank down again and covered her face with her hands. He continued.