There was a mutual pressure of hands between the brothers, and then they who listened hoped to hear of Anna next, but of her Robert was still silent, and they suffered him to take his own course, following him with breathless interest as he told of his life in the mines, and how he had been successful beyond his most sanguine hopes,—how friends had sprung up around him, and all things had conspired to make him happy, were it not for the dreadful memories of the past which haunted him continually. “I should have written when I learned that I was safe from a felon’s doom,” he said, “but with this information came news of so terrible a nature that I was stunned for many months, so that I cared little what became of me, and when feeling came back again, I said I’ll wait until I have the money as a sure peace offering. I had it almost earned once, two years ago, but by a great reverse I lost so much that I was compelled to wait yet longer,—wait, as it seems, till you came here to find me. It is all a dream to me yet that you are here, and that I, perhaps, shall breathe again my native air, and visit the old home. Is it greatly changed?” “Many would think West Lawn improved,” Richard replied, “but to us who loved Anna it can never be the same.” There was another silence, and then Richard, who could no longer restrain himself, exclaimed: “Robert, if you know aught which can throw a ray of light on Anna’s dark face, in pity tell us what it is! You do know,—you must know!—Was Anna your wife?” Richard could hear the beatings of his own and his brother’s heart as he waited for the answer, which, when it came, was a decided “_Yes_, Anna was my wife!” CHAPTER XIX. ANNA. The summer moonlight was shining into the sick-room, where, with Richard and his mother beside him, Robert West was summoning nerve and courage to tell the story they were waiting so anxiously to hear. With the assertion that “Anna was my wife,” he had fainted, and since then a night and a day had intervened, during which no word of the past had escaped his lips. But now that he was stronger, he had said to his mother and brother, “Sit beside me, and if I can I will tell you of Anna.” They needed no second bidding, but gathered closely to him, and there, in the quiet room, Robert West began the story, in which there was a slight recapitulation of what he had before told, but which will help to enlighten the reader with regard to Robert’s past.