“By such assurances as these--by dwelling incessantly upon the fact that I was his wife, and that this proposed marriage to you was an empty form--upon your hate for him, and the certainty of your still greater hate, he gradually worked upon me. He appealed to my love for him, my pity for his situation, and to every feeling that could move me in his favor. Then it was that he told me frankly the name of the clergyman who had married us, and the witness. The clergyman's name was Porter, and the witness was a Captain Reeves. So, in spite of my abhorrence of the act, I was led at last, out of my very love to him, and regard for his future, to acquiesce in his plan. Above all, I was moved by one thing upon which he laid great stress. “'It will really be for her benefit,' he would say. 'She will not be married at all. I shall take some of her money, certainly; but she is so enormously rich that she will never feel it; besides, if I didn't get it, Wiggins would. Better for her cousin to have it. It will be all in the family. Above all, this will be the means, and the only means, of freeing her from that imprisonment in which Wiggins keeps her. That is her chief desire. She will gain it. After I pay my debts I will explain all to her; and what is more, when I succeed to my own inheritance, as I must do in time, I shall pay her every penny.' “By such plausible reasoning as this he drove away my last objection, and so, with out any further hesitation, I went about that task. “But oh, how hard it was! Over and over again I felt like giving up. But always he was ready to urge me on, until at last it was accomplished, and ended as you remember.” Miss Fortescue paused here, and made no reply. Edith said not a word. Why should she? What availed this woman's repentance now? “I came here,” continued Miss Fortescue at length, “first of all to explain this, but to tell you other things also. I must now tell you something which makes your position more painful than I thought it would be. I soon found out the full depth of Captain Dudleigh's villainy. While I thought that you only were deceived, I found that I the one who was most deceived.