“‘Do not take it to heart, dear father,’ I said. ‘Look at me! I do not appear to be dying of despair, do I? Do not grieve for me, since I do not grieve for myself. Let us, from time to time, live for each other. You, dear, dear father! have had a great sorrow which you bear like a Christian. I have had a humiliating disappointment and a wholesome lesson; though like most of the teachings of experience, the lesson comes too late to do the pupil any good. But from this time I will forget my trouble and live for you.’ “He was still staring at me with more wonder and amazement than before. “‘I had not the remotest suspicion that it was Luigi Saviola whom you had married,’ he murmured, as if speaking to himself. Then after another long, speculating look at me, he inquired: “‘Elfrida, my darling, how came you to marry this young man—was your act a mere whim, a childish freak, or could you really have loved him?’ “I saw by his whole manner that there was some afterthought in my father’s mind that I did not comprehend; but I answered him: “‘I thought I loved him; but in my ignorance and inexperience I must have been misled by fancy and imagination to mistake admiration and enthusiasm for love; but the hallucination was strong enough to make me forget every duty I should have remembered and held sacred.’ “‘Tell me all about your courtship and marriage, Elfrida!’ he said. “And then I told him, as faithfully as I have set it down here for you, Abel, every particular—of Saviola’s introduction to me; of the growth of our acquaintance and its development into that false hero-worship which I mistook for love; of our runaway marriage, in which Angus Anglesea aided as my guardian, saying that since he had no power to prevent the marriage he would see that it was solemnized legally and properly. “‘God bless the boy!’ broke in my father, with so much fervor that I had not heart to tell him afterward what a villain Anglesea had proved himself—in the sequel—to be. “Then I told him of our travels; of my letters of contrition to him; of my disappointments in not hearing from him; of the gradual opening of my eyes to the true character of my husband; of my grief, wonder and humiliation at discovering that my imaginary hero, martyr, patriot, humanitarian, was no better than a professional gambler and adventurer! Still, though his life degraded himself and me, though I could no longer adore and worship him as I had done when I believed in him—still I bore with him because I really thought that he loved me, that with all his faults he was faithful to me. In this belief I lived and hoped until the end came. Then, indeed, the last scales fell from my eyes. I know that if he had ever loved me, he had ceased to do so now. “‘Poor fellow!’ murmured my father, as if he judged Saviola much more leniently than I could do. And again the impression came to me that there was an afterthought lurking in his mind, incomprehensible to mine.