“Saw and spoke to my wife?” he repeated. “My dear Gwendolyn, you are certainly dreaming. I have no wife.” “She told me that her husband refused to acknowledge her, and that, having no one to befriend her, she could not assert her rights,” pursued Lady Gwendolyn, without heeding his denial. “And, poor thing! she quite wrung my heart, she looked so dejected and hopeless.” “But not through any fault of mine.” “Why do you try to deceive me, Colonel Dacre? When a man has committed such a wrong as you have done, the only atonement he can make is a full confession. Treat me frankly now, and I will forgive you everything.” “Forgive everything! What do you mean, Gwendolyn? I want your love, not your forgiveness. I do not deserve the former, I am aware; but I have certainly done nothing to make it necessary for me to claim the latter.” “Perhaps you look upon bigamy as a very small offense.” “But I have never committed bigamy, Gwendolyn. Indeed, until I saw you I never wanted even to commit matrimony.” “Then who was it I saw in your house?” “I have a crazy protégée in the village, whom I allow to wander about the park, as she is perfectly harmless. She has very strange delusions, and may have taken it into her head that she is married to me, and I am trying to keep her out of her rights. Who shall answer for the hallucinations of a disordered brain?” “The person I saw was a lady,” said Lady Gwendolyn. “That is a point upon which it was impossible for me to be deceived, of course. She was unusually delicate and refined looking, and her accent was perfect. Your protégée in the village could never have managed to play the lady so well.” “I don’t know about that. Mad people are very cunning and imitative.” “Still, they cannot perform impossibilities. Let her imitation have been ever so good, she must have betrayed herself in some way.” “If you had suspected her, you would have perceived certain deficiencies that passed unnoticed under the circumstances.” “Impossible. I knew nothing whatever about her, and was ready to believe anything. The impression she made on me was, as I said before, of an extremely refined, lady-like person, and I have no doubt in my own mind that she was a gentlewoman, and your wife.” “She may have been a gentlewoman, but she was certainly not my wife,” replied the colonel. “Will you swear that?” “I will swear by my mother’s memory--which I love and revere--that I never had a wife.” “Will you swear also that you do not know the lady I have been describing?” “No; for I did not see her.” “But you know whom I mean?” persisted Lady Gwendolyn. “I know nothing,” was the evasive reply. “I was not present at your interview, and had no reason to suppose there was any one in the house who would dare to make such a charge against me. As I said before, I do not pretend to be a saint, but I have never wronged or deceived a living woman.”