‘When this letter is in your hands I shall have left you, in all probability for a long time, perhaps for ever. I love you as dearly, as fondly, as passionately as ever man loved woman, and the pain of leaving you is worse than the pain of death. Life is not so sweet to me as you are. This world holds no other delight for me but your sweet company, your heavenly love; yet I, the most miserable of men, must forego both. ‘Dearest, I have done a shameful and perhaps a foolish act. I have committed a crime in order to bind your life with mine, somehow, in the rash hope that some day that bond may be made legal and complete. Two ends are served by this act of mine. I have won you from all other men--John Treverton’s wife will have no suitor--and I have secured you the possession of your old home and your adopted father’s fortune. His desire is at least realized by this sad and broken wedding of ours. ‘Dearest love, I must leave you, because there is an old tie which forbids me as a man of honour to be more to you than I now am. Your husband in name; your defender and champion, if need were, before all the world; your adoring slave, in secret and in absence, to the day of my death. If Fate prove kind, this bond of which I speak will not last for ever. My fetters will fall off some day, and I shall return to you a free man. Oh, my love, pity and forgive me, keep a place in your heart for me always, and believe that in acting as I have acted I have been prompted by love alone. I shall not touch a sixpence of my cousin’s fortune till I can come back to you, a free man, and receive wealth and happiness from you. Till then you will be sole mistress of Hazlehurst Manor, and all that goes with it. Mr. Sampson will tell you what settlement I have made--a settlement that will be duly executed by me upon the day on which I become the ostensible owner of my cousin Jasper’s estate. ‘My beloved, I can say no more; I dare reveal no more. If you deign to think at all of one who has so deceived you, think of me pityingly as the most deeply wretched of men. Forgive me if you can; and I dare even to hope for pardon from the infinite goodness of your nature. It is sweet to me in my misery to know that you bear my name--that there is a link between us that can never be broken, even though Fate should be cruel enough to part us for life. But I hope for better things from destiny; I hope for and look forward to a time when I shall sign myself with pride and gladness more intense than the pain I feel to-day, your loving husband, JOHN TREVERTON.’ She stood for some minutes pale as marble, with the letter in her hand, and then she lifted the senseless paper to her lips, and kissed it passionately. ‘He loves me,’ she cried involuntarily. ‘Thank God for that. I can bear anything now I am sure of that.’