"I have promised that you shall not see her unless you can explain satisfactorily what you have done. Tell me, why did you, a perfect stranger as she declares, represent yourself to her as the man she expected to marry and for whom she was waiting on that dock?" "Then Miss Mont was right!" exclaimed John Ryder. "Miss Mont? Do you mean your wife?" Ryder eagerly told Mrs. Brack in detail of the mystery of the two girls named Mont and of all Rose Mont had surmised. He knew now who Ruth must be. His listener sat enthralled until he had completed his story. Then she suddenly took him by both shoulders and gave him a little shake. "John Ryder," she said, repeating (though in a more refined phrase) Miss Solomons' stated opinion of his character, "John Ryder, you are a particularly foolish man. There is one principle of married life which you have overlooked--it is the foundation, indeed, of wedded happiness. "_Mutual confidence_. If two people possess that, happiness may come or go; that is a craft that sails with variable winds. But trust must remain if wedded comradeship is to last. "The very first thing that started suspicion in your mind should have made you go to your wife for an explanation. Because you did not do this you both have got into much sorrow and anxiety. "Tell me," the woman added suddenly: "Which of these two women do you love? You fell in love with that other Miss Mont on the steamship, and asked her to be your wife. You must have thought you loved her. But you met this poor child you have married and seem to have felt no difference in the two. And yet there must be a difference--a vast difference. "Which of them do you really love?" "There is no doubt in my mind, Mrs. Brack," he told her with earnestness. "I was attracted by Rose Mont's face and by her qualities of mind. I thought I loved her. Possibly, had I married her, I never should have known that I had mistaken admiration for love. "But Ruth I have married. And from the moment I knew she was mine--yes, from the moment we clasped hands upon the wharf--my feeling for her was far different from that I had held for Rose. "Rose has no power over me, Mrs. Brack. I cannot explain it very clearly; but it is true. There is no response in me when I touch her hand or when she is near me. But Ruth--I tell you I love my wife, Mrs. Brack, and I'll fight for the possession of her if any man tries to take her from me!" "That is enough! I believe you!" the woman said, her eyes shining. "You need comfort as well as Ruth, for you, too, have suffered. And I am going to tell you something, that which will bring to your heart the assurance it needs. "Your wife has been a poor girl all her life. Of late she has been a nurse, supporting herself entirely. She was tacitly adopted into the family of this John B. White when she was very small.