“You can imagine something of our trouble and consternation when we learned all this,” madam relentlessly resumed, “when, too, we learned that he had married a woman concerning whose history and family he knew absolutely nothing, and about whom there seemed to be some strange mystery. When I demanded why he had not insisted upon having everything explained, his answer was that you were easily excited, and he feared the effect upon your health. But he promised that he would inform me regarding your history as soon as he learned it himself. He was, however, called so unexpectedly abroad that the matter was not cleared up. I had intended to be patient until his return—to trust that all would come out right in the end, and leave the matter with him to settle. But to-day I learned something which made me resolve to sift the subject to the bottom, and to demand an open confession from you. And now I ask you, Salome, who you are, what your real name is—for I have reason to doubt that Howland is such—why you have so persistently kept your husband in the dark regarding your past, and what the mystery is that surrounds you.” CHAPTER XIII. “YOUR MARRIAGE WAS ILLEGAL; YOU ARE NO WIFE!” Salome had sat like a statue during this last tirade. Her heart was like lead in her bosom; her feet and hands like ice, her face, after that vivid flush of shame, pale as marble, and all the while those blighting words, which Madame Winthrop had represented as her son’s, and which had been confirmed by Evelyn, rang in her ears like a sentence of doom upon her future happiness. How could she believe them after those last fond expressions to which he had given utterance before he had parted with her in his room? when he had held her in his arms and pronounced that tender little benediction over her, “May Heaven bless and keep you, my own wife, while we are parted, and grant that we may be soon reunited.” When he had seemed so anxious that she should take such good care of herself, and would “not know a moment’s peace if he thought she was grieving.” And his letters since his departure had breathed so much of anxiety and affection for her; in them he had called her for the first time “his darling,” “his precious wife,” and entreated her over and over again to take care of herself for his sake. Could she believe that all this was hypocrisy on his part—that he would pretend to so much affection for her, and tell his mother and sister something different? No—she would never believe it of him. She would trust her husband—she believed him to be honorable, noble, truthful, and she would allow nothing to come between them or disturb her faith in him.