"Then indeed you are a good man," exclaimed Valdriguez, "for it is given only to honest people to have a sure ear for the truth. Now it will be easier to tell you the rest. Some weeks after we had gone through this ceremony, first Lord and then Lady Wilmersley died; on her deathbed I confided to my lady that I was her son's wife and she gave me her blessing. My humble birth she forgave--after all it was less humble than her own--and was content that her son had chosen a girl of her own race and faith. As soon as the funeral was over, I urged my husband to announce our marriage, but he would not. He proposed that we should go for a while to the continent so that on our return it would be taken for granted that we had been married there, and in this way much unpleasant talk avoided. So we went to Paris and there we lived together openly as man and wife, not indeed under his name but under mine. He pretended that he wanted for once to see the world from the standpoint of the people; that he desired for a short time to be free from the restrictions of his rank. I myself dreaded so much entering a class so far above me that I was glad of the chance of spending a few more months in obscurity. For some weeks I was happy, then Lord Wilmersley began to show himself to me as he really was. We had taken a large apartment near the Luxembourg, and soon it became the meeting-ground for the most reckless element of the Latin Quarter. Ah, if you but knew what sights I saw, what things I heard in those days! I feared that my very soul was being polluted, so I consulted a priest as to what I should do. He told me it was my duty to remain constantly at my husband's side; with prayer and patience I might some day succeed in reforming him. So I stayed in that hell and bore the insults and humiliations he heaped upon me without a murmur. Now, looking back on the past, I think my meekness and resignation only exasperated him, for he grew more and more cruel and seemed to think of nothing but how to torture me into revolt. Whether I should have been given the strength to endure indefinitely, the life he led me I do not know, but one evening, when we were as usual entertaining a disreputable rabble, a young man entered. I recognised him at once. It was the man who had married us! He was dressed in a brown velveteen suit; a red sash encircled his waist; and on his arm he flaunted a painted woman. Imagine my feelings! I stood up and turned to my husband. I could not speak--and he, the man I had loved, only laughed--laughed! Never shall I forget the sound of that laughter....