“But, Dora, I will give you time, and perhaps you can learn to love me as something nearer. Oh, if you will try,” pleaded the disappointed man. “My poor friend, it can never, never be. It is an utter impossibility!” she replied, weeping bitterly. After a few moments spent in deep thought, she continued: “Listen, Mr. Weimher, and I will tell you a secret. No one knows it. It is a story of the past, and I tell it to you to prove to you how hopeless it is for you to love me. My friend, I may trust you? You will not betray me?” “Can you ask? You have but to command me, and I obey, even to the yielding up of life itself.” She sighed deeply. It pained her to know of such rare devotion, when she had nothing to give in return. Bending toward him, she whispered: “I love another. I am already married!” “Good heavens!” he exclaimed, leaning trembling and aghast against the railing of the balcony. “It is even so,” she returned, sadly. “But I doubt if I should even know my own husband should I meet him now.” She then related to him the story of her youthful marriage, with which the reader is already acquainted; while Fredrich Weimher listened, spell-bound, to the thrilling and startling events which had transpired to bind for life one so young, beautiful, and good. There was a look of hope in his eyes again when she had finished, and he said, eagerly: “Dora, do you not know that that marriage ceremony can be set aside now if you so will it. If you will only give yourself to me, I will devote my life to your service until you are free.” “Nay—nay, my kind friend, you would but wreck my life then——” “The fates forbid!” he interrupted, fervently. “For,” she went on, “I love Robbie Ellerton still. Strange though it may seem, when that evil-minded man made us man and wife, I gave myself wholly to him. My love has grown with the growth of years, and I feel that naught but death can ever break the link that binds us.” “But, Dora, were you free—forgive me, but I must know—if by any chance death should set you free, would you give yourself to me?” He bent over her, holding his very breath, and his heart beat almost to suffocation as he waited for her answer, for upon it depended his last and only hope. “Fredrich—Mr. Weimher, I beg—I entreat you will not harbor such a thought for an instant,” she said, wildly. “He will not die—he shall not die. It cannot be that I have loved him all these long years for naught. It would shroud my life in a night of wild despair. No, he promised he would come and claim me, and I feel—I know he will. Yes, I am Robert Ellerton’s bride, and his alone will I be, whether it be a bride of life or of death.” He buried his face in his hands, and she could see the bright tears trickling through his fingers and falling at his feet. The sight of his sorrow recalled her to herself.