I made no answer, but only looked closely at him. As he caught my eye, the color flushed to his face and he started up. "Do you mean to say that he tries to identify me with my mother's eldest son?" he cried, with considerable excitement; "is this the story?--and her own letters--how are they pressed into the service?--is this what you have heard, Hester? Why do you not speak?--this is what you have heard!" "Yes," I said, under my breath, feeling something like a culprit under his eye. And Harry began to stride about the room, in considerable excitement, muttering words which I am afraid were not very commendatory to Saville. "The rascal!--the villain!--and only to deceive her--only to make my wife a party against me?" he exclaimed, as he paced through the apartment--then gradually subduing himself he came back and resumed his place by my side. "If it were not that the results of his scheming have blessed me beyond my hopes, I am afraid I should lack power to restrain myself," he said, "and all the more because this invention could only have been to deceive _you_, Hester, for it could not stand a moment's examination. I see what his abominable purpose was--to show to the world husband and wife contending with each other over this disputed inheritance. He must have trusted to your ignorance of the world--to your own truthful and open nature, which was beyond suspicion--and, good Heavens, Hester, think of it! to your hatred of me." To the very depths of my heart I was humiliated; it was a palpable fraud then, a trick, which could only have been tried upon a credulous fool, a woman, or a child. My last eminence sank beneath my feet; I had no longer even discrimination enough to judge between the false and the true. "Harry," I said faltering, "it may be only that I cannot bear you to think me so foolish: but I think indeed it might have deceived even a wiser person than I. I was prepared to think it a lie, but it looked very like truth, Harry; indeed it is difficult to consent to it that I have been so very _easily_ deceived." "Ah, Hester, it all comes of our past circumstances," said my husband, "you were deceived because you did not know my story; shall I tell it to you now?" I said "yes," eagerly--then my eye caught the forsaken breakfast table, the poor kettle subsided into noiseless quietness, all its cheerful boiling over. "But you have had no breakfast!" I exclaimed. How Harry laughed, how his face shone, and the tears came to his eyes! Strange that it was always some simplest word that moved him most. He threw the papers down, and caught me in his kind arms, and rejoiced over me. These common things put him in mind of what had happened to us, of the life that lay before us now, the union that began to-day.