"So the poor old man is gone at last, and our days of dissimulation are over," she replied, sobbing amid the smiles that beamed on her up-turned face. "And you have acted wisely in not adopting deep mourning yet." "Why--wisely?" she asked, while perceiving that her husband must have doffed his black costume somewhere on the way to Porthellick, for he was as usual attired in a shooting-suit and brown-leather gaiters; and she felt an unpleasant emotion by this circumstance, for whence this continued caution, she thought; this care, this hateful continuation of an alias, as it seemed, this playing of a double character, if all were right and clear? and now the passage in his letter flashed upon her memory. "I said 'wisely,' dearest Constance; because we have still a part to play." "Still?" she queried, mournfully, and her eyelids drooped. "Tell me--the children know nothing of this change in our fortunes, I hope?" "No--and dear Denzil, you are aware, has been--gazetted." "To my old corps--so I saw; God bless the boy?" exclaimed Richard Trevelyan; "yes, but what I mean is, that I must bring you all before the world--you as the wife, and them as the children, of Lord Lamorna, with judicious care and a strength of _conviction_ that none can doubt or challenge." "Oh, Richard," said she, trembling, "I do not understand you." "Here, I am still known as Captain Devereaux; but the world, which deems me a bachelor, must be convinced that we were married to each other in _faciæ ecclesiæ_, as those lawyer-fellows have it; and the proofs of that circumstance must be forthcoming." "Proofs?" she repeated, faintly, as she seated herself, and grew very, very pale, for it seemed to her over-sensitive mind, as if his manner had become hard and sententious, even while he stooped over, and tenderly and caressingly held in his, her little hand whereon was the wedding ring that Père Latour had consecrated; and now there ensued a brief pause, for in his knowledge of her extreme sensibility, and the amount of his own loving nature, he feared the explanation of all he meant might wound. Though some might have deemed the secresy to which he had condemned her for years (lest they might lose the large fortune now theirs) selfish; Richard Trevelyan had ever been nervously jealous of her honour, and the honour of their innocent children; and at times, he had accused himself of moral cowardice in his submission to the caprice of his uncle. In his heart he had always cursed the duplicity to which they had been compelled to resort, and the false position in which that duplicity had placed them all for such a length of time. All this was to be atoned for now; but he felt that it must be done wisely, warily and surely, or, as he had said, with _strength_, lest the world in which he had hitherto moved as a bachelor--that selfish and suspicious bugbear called "Society" might shrug its shoulders, and ask, "Can all this story be true?"