"One of three persons wrote this letter," he said--"I, or Mary Burns, or Marmaduke Burton, for from childhood we had the same masters." "'Tis Marmaduke Burton!" she cried with energy, seeing at last a path through this tangled forest of brushwood. "'Tis Marmaduke; for, as you must have seen, he came to Mary's cottage whilst Lord Randolph and I were there?" A cold shudder passed through Miles's heart, which had been awakening from its stupor of sorrow and suspicion, to take his proved faithful wife to it. This then, was the cause of her candour. Burton's most unexpected arrival at Mary's had induced her, from fear of discovery, to choose the wiser part, and tell him herself, lest another should! Oh, what a demon jealousy is! how unsleeping, how grasping in intellect; though all is perverted to harm! "Tell me all that passed," he uttered, without replying to her question; and, while she related, his mind formed all into the well-connected reality of a diseased brain. The same person who had so often warned him, none other than Marmaduke, had discovered this intrigue, and followed it up. The letter was probably written by Mary Burns, as an arm in Minnie's favour, should any thing be discovered by him; her absence, etc. Mary, who had once fallen, had doubly done so again, by pandering to the meetings of Lord Randolph and Minnie; he was a target for the scorn and contempt of all, and all these maddening thoughts passed through his soul, leaving him in outward seeming calm. There is _nothing_ more fearful than this concentrated, chained passion--'tis this which leads the best man to cold, deliberate murder. Silently he thought all this, and then, when the mind had compassed all his misery, it paused to deliberate on revenge. Then it was that mercy crept in, like the last ray of sunshine to the eyes dimmed by death, and he said to himself, "If she should be innocent still?" And, lifting his eyes, they rested upon hers, troubled, but pure and holy in their dove-like innocence of expression. "Minnie," he said, placing his arms around her, "I have many bitter thoughts in my heart. I am a very wretched man _now_--so happy once! But I feel my greatest sorrow would be your loss; as I before said to you, I _wish_ to think you innocent. I would rather know we were compassed by fiends, and be ever waging war with them in darkness, than know, or believe you false to me; _that_ would be my moral death, and make me the most reckless man on earth! I _will_ believe you innocent." "I am, Miles; believe me. I have not even a thought which has ever wronged you." "I will believe you, Minnie, against all evidence but proof," and he took the trembling woman to his heart, so shaken, but so true.