"'She is dead,' replied the Earl; 'I have now obtained certain information that she is dead; but I cannot say,' he added; and he grasped my arm tightly while he spoke--'I cannot say I am sure that she was dead before this second marriage was contracted; and now, Bertha,' he continued, 'now, swear to me, by everything you hold sacred, never, till I permit you, to reveal to any one the fact of my former marriage; and if you do swear, you bind me to you for ever!' I did swear, for we both thought that she was dead; and I kept that promise inviolably. But I asked him, before I took any vow, if he had kept his, and preserved the proofs of his first marriage; for, at first, I thought he wished to entangle me by an oath, when his real wife was still living; and I had repented enough already what I had done against her. He told me that he had, and showed them to me in the chamber where they were preserved: and again he swore never to destroy them, though her death, he said, might well free him from that promise. But I saw then, and I have seen through his life, that he felt, as well as I did--that there was a fate attached to those papers which would one day change everything. "He then brought me to the presence of his lady, to whom he had announced my coming. When the door opened for me to enter, and she knew who it was, she turned towards me, as I thought, coldly and somewhat sullenly; but the moment after, she looked surprised. She had expected to see a young and handsome girl; but she saw a lean and sallow woman, and all doubts of me and of her husband, if she had entertained such, vanished. She became as kind to me as the first day of spring, though she was often haughty and cold to others. She trusted me in everything, and I learned to love her well. I loved her better, far better, than the mistress I had at first served; but there was still something wanting in the latter attachment. I believe it was the freshness of early feelings; the freshness that never comes again. However, after I had been in England for some ten years, and one son of the Earl and his Countess had been born and died, and the second supplied his place, being then but a sickly child himself, I remained behind for a short time in London after they had quitted the court to come down into the country. In about ten days I followed, and travelling slowly, stopped one night at a little inn in the town of Stockbridge.