"What am I to do?" she asked herself, miserably, as she walked up and down the floor in her pretty blue dressing-gown, with her white hands twisted together in a childish fashion she had. "I do not believe the heroine of the most impossible novel was ever placed in a more harrowing situation. Here am I betrothed to the villain of the story, when my husband, whom I believed to be dead, unexpectedly pops upon the scene. And instead of his appearance simplifying matters, it tangles them into a Gordian knot, and I can only ask myself what I shall do!" She laughed--a mocking, mirthless little laugh that startled a dozen eerie little echoes in the corners of the room. "Heigh-ho! I know what I would do if _he_ loved me," she said to herself, wistfully, "I would fly to my husband's arms, and defy Julius Revington to do his worst. I would say to him proudly, I have here an honest name, and a true love of which your machinations cannot deprive me!" The quick tears started out beneath her golden-brown lashes. "Alas, alas! he does not love me," she sighed. "Why should he do so? He never saw me but once before last night. It was my own willful folly that led him into that dreadful marriage. I doubt not he was glad when he thought that my reckless suicide had broken the fetters that had bound him. Last night he pretended not to know me, yet he could hardly have been ignorant of my identity. He could not have forgotten my face so soon. It is a fair one, they say--yet not fair enough to have won his heart." That momentous question, "What am I to do?" echoed drearily in her heart. She could find no answer to it; she could think of no refuge from her sorrow. For the first time since that awful night in the cold, dark waves, she wished that the friendly plank had not drifted to her reach--that she had perished miserably then rather than have lived to find herself in this terrible strait. "I cannot marry Mr. Revington now," she thought. "I must take back my promise of yesterday, with no reason save that of a woman's fickleness. He will be very angry; he will tell my miserable story to Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Leslie, to all of these people that sneer at the mystery that enshrouds my past. What shall I do?" A passionate shame surged over her at the thought of the cold looks and sneering words that would be thrown at her when her discarded suitor should tell these strangers that her mother was a dishonored woman, and that she, her child, had no right to her father's name. She fancied that Mrs. Leslie and Mr. Stuart, the only two friends she had, would be turned against her, too. She would be utterly alone and wretched--friendless and forsaken.