'My haughty uncle proving obdurate to the last degree, there was no hope for me so far as he was concerned; so I took the Queen's shilling and sailed for India, and there I strove to forget my boyish folly, the contemptible position I had occupied with such a father and mother-in-law, the disgust and horror with which their advent and their surroundings inspired me--sick, too, of the slatternly girl I had married, for slatternly she too was in her home and when off the stage, reserving all her toilettes and her graces for the British public. 'You know the rest. I soon got a commission through the ranks--sooner than I could have got it through the medium of a crammer and exams. From the hour I turned at midnight along the Marina of Hastings, and heard the monotonous sound of the surge, as it rolled on the beach in the dark, I have never heard of my wife or been able to trace her. Her odious parents I discovered have been long since dead, and that she is no longer on the stage, or, if so, bears another name, or has gone I know not where. 'I have sometimes hoped that I had been freed from her by death--ungenerous though that hope may be, and that my uncle must have heard of her demise, when by a codicil to his will he left me all his fortune. And now you know why it was that I dared not make a proposal to Mrs. Trelawney--nor did I ever think of love or marriage till I met her lately; and how I love her, and have struggled to tear that hopeless passion from my heart, is known only to God and to myself!' CHAPTER XI. THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW. 'Poor Dalton! you have indeed suffered deeply--paid dear for your boyish folly,' said Goring, as the former concluded the little story of his early life in a voice tremulous with emotion. 'Now the apparent inconsistency of your attention to Mrs. Trelawney is quite accounted for.' 'Until I knew myself free to ask her to be my wife I had sworn in my inner heart that I would not do so--indeed, I dared not do so; yet, for the life of me, attracted as I was, I could not help hovering about her; but now I am going to Ashanti, and there is an end of it! Such was the end of the fatal passion of a foolish lad. Since those days I have never entered a theatre, and shudder at the mere idea of a dramatic situation.' 'You are in one now,' said a sweet and tremulous voice, as Mrs. Trelawney, who, unseen and unheard by them in their preoccupation, had softly entered the room, stood before them. How much or how little she had overheard they did not precisely know, but with a smile of mingled sadness and sweetness, pride and triumph, she threw up her veil, and the full light of the gasalier overhead fell upon her rich, shining hair, her beautiful and animated countenance. 'Mrs. Trelawney!' exclaimed the friends together, as they started from their chairs. 'You here--in Southampton!' added Dalton, in a voice tremulous with bewilderment.