“You know what followed. He came down with us to Mondreer. He cast his eyes upon our dear daughter, Odalite, and on her fortune—not only on her American fortune, but on her English prospects. “Ah! my poor Odalite! She was engaged to be married to her faithful lover, Leonidas Force, who was expected home on the Christmas of that year; and she was as true as truth to her love; she was not for a moment ‘fascinated by the admiration of the brilliant stranger,’ as people said. She sacrificed herself to save me; and in saving me, to save you and her sisters. “Do you know what that snake who had entered our paradise threatened to do if he were not bought off by the hand and fortune and prospects of our daughter Odalite? He threatened to publish my secret to the whole world! “Ah! how I mourned then that I had not told you the sad story before accepting your offer of marriage, and left you free to withdraw or to renew that offer. “It was too late then! Every year that I had kept the story from you made it harder and more humiliating to tell. And he threatened to tell—not you—that would have been terrible enough—but to tell everybody!—to tell the story in the barrooms of the country inns, at the gentlemen’s wine parties and oyster suppers—and everywhere! He would leave our house, take up his lodgings at the Calvert, and spread the venom over the whole community. That would have been fatal! Abel, this story, as he would have told it, must have driven us all in dishonor from the neighborhood. I think it would have killed you. You are strong and brave, and could have borne much—everything but dishonor! That would have killed you! I know it would have driven me mad, and it would have blighted the lives of our children. “I was nearly insane, even then. Some women in such a position would have committed suicide; but, apart from its sinfulness, it would have been ineffectual in my case, as, if I had died, he would still have blackmailed Odalite. Some other women in my position would have killed Anglesea. I knew that; and I knew that if ever man deserved death at a woman’s hands, he did at mine; but I was not even tempted so ruthlessly to break the sacred laws of God. Nay, let me say here, that weak, blind and foolish as I have been, I have not only tried to keep, but I have kept those laws from my youth up. “What is it, then, that I have confessed to you? Not a sin, not a fault, but a secret that I have kept from you because I had not strength enough to tell you, or light enough to know you, or wisdom enough to confide in your wisdom. It was no sin of mine that my marriage was a deception practiced upon me; but it was a great wrong to you to keep the secret of that marriage. “You know now the secret of my life—why I consented to sacrifice Odalite to that man, from whom she was saved as by a miracle. “Is it a mockery to ask you to pardon this lifelong secret, Abel? I know that you will pardon as freely as God pardons.