"Not even if they told you I was unworthy of you--if they tried to separate us by lies and false inventions?" "Dear--dear, Eugene, what can make you talk thus?--forsake you! never: even if they were so wicked. Why even if you were really what they represented--" "What--what? you would not forsake me _then_?" "Cain's wife forsook not her husband, and yet his crime was greater than anything you could ever have committed," she answered in a gentle, cheerful voice. "True--true--true," hurriedly he replied, (but why had he been fool enough to put Cain into her head?)--"True, dear Mary, you are an angel, but then Cain's faithful friend was his wife. I meant, if _before_ we were married, they tried to separate us by such measures,--or if for instance," he added quite cheerfully and naturally, "if, as you quite seem to think possible, I am sorry to perceive, I did turn out a villain." "Then," Mary answered firmly and gravely, "the course of conduct I must pursue would be a question of right and wrong; it is difficult for me indeed, to realize to myself such a position of affairs; but I know--I feel," with a self-accusing sigh, "what my heart would at present dictate--that I could never of my own accord forsake you, Eugene--never could cancel the engagement which binds us to each other--unless indeed," she added, "you, Eugene, should desire it." "_I_ desire, it!" he repeated with a laugh of tender scorn, "what in the world could now arise to render our separation, for a day even, desirable in my eyes? No, the time will soon be here when, you know, Mary, what you have promised--that we shall never again be obliged to part." Strange--strange world of contradiction; strange indeed, that in so very brief a space of time the same enthusiastic speaker should be the first-- But we must not anticipate. CHAPTER II. The nuptial day was fix'd, the plighting kiss Glowed on my lips; that moment the abyss, Which hid by moss-grown time yet yawned as wide Beneath my feet, divorced me from her side. A letter came-- THE NEW TIMON. "There is a tide in the affairs of man," and Mary's we have seen, from the time of her first arrival at Silverton, has seemed to run on to the full, with a most uninterrupted flow of smooth prosperity most alarming. It was quite the latter end of November that the first break in the party assembled at Silverton was occasioned by the departure of Arthur Seaham for Scotland, where he went for the purpose both of seeing his sister Alice, and arranging several matters of business, and at the same time to consult his brother-in-law, Mr. Gillespie, whose opinion and legal experience he held in high estimation, concerning the measures to be adopted with reference to his intended professional studies. By Christmas, however, Arthur would be in London, and there again meet Mary, who in less than ten days from his departure was to accompany the de Burgh's to town, Trevor also proceeding thither.