‘You have behaved very unkindly to me,’ she answered, slowly, gravely, her voice trembling a little. ‘You have used me in a manner which I think a woman with proper womanly pride could hardly forgive.’ ‘Laura!’ he cried, piteously. ‘But I fear I am not possessed of proper womanly pride; for I have forgiven you,’ she said, innocently. ‘My treasure! my delight!’ ‘But it would have been so much easier to forgive if you had trusted me, if you had told me all the truth. Oh, John, husband and yet no husband, you have treated me very cruelly.’ Here she forgot her unreasoning joy at seeing him again, and suddenly remembered herself and her wrongs. ‘I know, love,’ he said, on his knees beside her, ‘I seem to have acted vilely, and yet, believe me, dearest, my sole motive was the desire to protect your interests.’ ‘Your conduct has put me to shame before all mankind,’ urged Laura, meaning the village of Hazlehurst. ‘You have no right to approach me, no right to look me in the face. Have you not confessed in that cruel letter that you were not free to marry me, that you belong in some way to another woman?’ ‘That other woman is dead. I am free as the air.’ ‘What was she? your wife?’ There was a look of infinite pain in John Treverton’s face. His lips moved as if about to speak, but he was silent. There are some truths difficult of utterance; and it is not easy to all men to lie. ‘It is too painful a story,’ he began at last, speaking hurriedly, as if he wanted to make a speedy end of a hateful subject. ‘A good many years ago, when I was very young, and a most consummate fool, I got myself entrapped into a Scotch marriage. You have heard of the peculiarities of the marriage law in Scotland.’ ‘Yes, I have heard and read about them.’ ‘Of course. Well, it was a marriage and no marriage--a reckless, half-jesting promise, tortured, by false witnesses, into a legal undertaking. I found myself, unawares, a married man--a millstone tied round my neck. I will tell you no more of that wretched entanglement, dearest. It would not be good for you to hear. I will only say that I bore my burthen more patiently than most men would have borne it, and now I thank God with all my heart and soul for my freedom. And I come to you, dear love, to implore your forgiveness, and to ask you to join me, three weeks hence, in some quiet place thirty or forty miles from here, where no one will know us, and where we may be married again some fine summer morning; so that, if that Scotch marriage of mine were really binding, and our former marriage illegal, we may tie the knot securely, and for ever.’ ‘You should have trusted me at first, John,’ Laura said reproachfully.