We walked to the far end of the hall. Major Fitz-David openedthe door of a long, narrow room built out at the back of thehouse as a smoking-room, and extending along one side of thecourtyard as far as the stable wall.

My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end ofit, near the fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me insilence as I entered. The Major softly closed the door on us andretired. Eustace never stirred a step to meet me. I ran to him,and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The embrace wasnot returned; the kiss was not returned. He passivelysubmitted--nothing more.

"Eustace!" I said, "I never loved you more dearly than I love youat this moment! I never felt for you as I feel for you now!"

He released himself deliberately from my arms. He signed to mewith the mechanical courtesy of a stranger to take a chair.

"Thank you, Valeria," he answered, in cold, measured tones. "Youcould say no less to me, after what has happened; and you couldsay no more. Thank you."

We were standing before the fire-place. He left me, and walkedaway slowly with his head down, apparently intending to leave theroom.

I followed him--I got before him--I placed myself between him andthe door.

"Why do you leave me?" I said. "Why do you speak to me in thiscruel way? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_angry, I ask you to forgive me."

"It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon," he replied. "I beg youto forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife."

He pronounced those words with a hopeless, heart-broken humilitydreadful to see. I laid my hand on his bosom. I said, "Eustace,look at me."

He slowly lifted his eyes to my face--eyes cold and clear andtearless--looking at me in steady resignation, in immovabledespair. In the utter wretchedness of that moment, I was likehim; I was as quiet and as cold as my husband. He chilled, hefroze me.

"Is it possible," I said, "that you doubt my belief in yourinnocence?"

He left the question unanswered. He sighed bitterly to himself."Poor woman!" he said, as a stranger might have said, pitying me."Poor woman!"

My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my handfrom his bosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.

"I don't ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice.You are not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with thetruth in the days when we first knew that we loved each other--ifyou had told me all, and more than all that I know now--a s Godis my witness I would still have married you! _Now_ do you doubtthat I believe you are an innocent man!"

"I don't doubt it," he said. "All your impulses are generous,Valeria. You are speaking generously and feeling generously.Don't blame me, my poor child, if I look on further than you do:if I see what is to come--too surely to come--in the cruelfuture."

"The cruel future!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"

"You believe in my innocence, Valeria. The jury who tried medoubted it--and have left that doubt on record. What reason have_you_ for believing, in the face of the Verdict, that I am aninnocent man?"

"I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite ofthe Verdict."

"Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt knowwhat has happened--and sooner or later they must know it--whatwill they say? They will say, 'He began badly; he concealed fromour niece that he had been wedded to a first wife; he married ourniece under a false name. He may say he is innocent; but we haveonly his word for it. When he was put on his Trial, the Verdictwas Not Proven. Not Proven won't do for us. If the jury have donehim an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him prove it.' That iswhat the world thinks and says of me. That is what your friendswill think and say of me. The time is coming, Valeria, whenyou--even You--will feel that your friends have reason to appealto on their side, and that you have no reason on yours."

"That time will never come!" I answered, warmly. "You wrong me,you insult me, in thinking it possible!"

He put down my hand from him, and drew back a step, with a bittersmile.

"We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for meis new and young. Time, which wears away all things, will wearaway the first fervor of that love."

"Never! never!"

He drew back from me a little further still.

"Look at the world around you," he said. "The happiest husbandsand wives have their occasional misunderstandings anddisagreements; the brightest married life has its passing clouds.When those days come for _us,_ the doubts and fears that youdon't feel now will find their way to you then. When the cloudsrise in _our_ married life--when I say my first harsh word, whenyou make your first hasty reply--then, in the solitude of yourown room, in the stillness of the wakeful night, you will thinkof my first wife's miserable death. You will remember that I washeld responsible for it, and that my innocence was never proved.You will say to yourself, 'Did it begin, in _her_ time, with aharsh word from him and with a hasty reply from her? Will it oneday end with me as the jury half feared that it ended with her?'Hideous questions for a wife to ask herself! You will stiflethem; you will recoil from them, like a good woman, with horror.But when we meet the next morning you will be on your guard, andI shall see it, and know in my heart of hearts what it means.Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word may be harsherstill. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly andmore boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner, andthat the question of his first wife's death was never properlycleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell aremingling for us here? Was it for nothing that I warned you,solemnly warned you, to draw back, when I found you bent ondiscovering the truth? Can I ever be at your bedside now, whenyou are ill, and not remind you, in the most innocent things Ido, of what happened at that other bedside, in the time of thatother woman whom I married first? If I pour out your medicine, Icommit a suspicious action--they say I poisoned _her_ in hermedicine. If I bring you a cup of tea, I revive the remembranceof a horrid doubt--they said I put the arsenic in _her_ cup oftea. If I kiss you when I leave the room, I remind you that theprosecution accused me of kissing _her,_ to save appearances andproduce an effect on the nurse. Can we live together on suchterms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery ofit. This very day I said to you, 'If you stir a step further inthis matter, there is an end of your happiness for the rest ofyour life.' You have taken that step and the end has come to yourhappiness and to mine. The blight that cankers and kills is onyou and on me for the rest of our lives!"

So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last wordsthe picture of the future that he was placing before me becametoo hideous to be endured. I refused to hear more.

"You are talking horribly," I said. "At your age and at mine,have we done with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy toLove and Hope to say it!"

"Wait till you have read the Trial," he answered. "You mean toread it, I suppose?"

"Every word of it! With a motive, Eustace, which you have yet toknow."

"No motive of yours, Valeria, no love and hope of yours, canalter the inexorable facts. My first wife died poisoned; and theverdict of the jury has not absolutely acquitted me of the guiltof causing her death. As long as you were ignorant of that thepossibilities of happiness were always within our reach. Now youknow it, I say again--our married life is at an end."

"No," I said. "Now I know it, our married life has begun--begunwith a new object for your wife's devotion, with a new reason foryour wife's love!"

"What do you mean?"

I went near to him again, and took his hand.

"What did you tell me the world has said of you?" I asked. "Whatdid you tell me my friends would say of you? 'Not Proven won't dofor us. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_innocent--let him prove it.' Those were the words you put intothe mouths of my friends. I adopt them for mine! I say Not Provenwon't do for _me._ Prove your right, Eustace, to a verdict of NotGuilty. Why have you let three years pass without doing it? ShallI guess why? You have waited for your wife to help you. Here sheis, my darling, ready to help you with all her heart and soul.Here she is, with one object in life--to show the world and toshow the Scotch Jury that her husband is an innocent man!"

I had roused myself; my pulses were throbbing, my voice rangthrough the room. Had I roused _him_? What was his answer?

"Read the Trial." That was his answer.

I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shookhim with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost havestruck him for the tone in which he had spoken and the look thathe had cast on me!

"I have told you that I mean to read the Trial," I said. "I meanto read it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake hasbeen made. Evidence in your favor that might have been found hasnot been found. Suspicious circumstances have not beeninvestigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! theconviction of some dreadful oversight, committed by you or by thepersons who helped you, is firmly settled in my mind. Theresolution to set that vile Verdict right was the firstresolution that came to me when I first heard of it in the nextroom. We _will_ set it right! We _must_ set it right--for yoursake, for my sake, for the sake of our children if we are blessedwith children. Oh, my own love, don't look at me with those coldeyes! Don't answer me in those hard tones! Don't treat me as if Iwere talking ignorantly and madly of something that can neverbe!"

Still I never roused him. His next words were spokencompassionately rather than coldly--that was all.

"My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land,"he said. "After such men have done their utmost, and havefailed--my poor Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We canonly submit."

"Never!" I cried. "The greatest lawyers are mortal men; thegreatest lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can't denythat."

"Read the Trial." For the third time he said those cruel words,and said no more.

In utter despair of moving him---feeling keenly, bitterly (if Imust own it), his merciless superiority to all that I had said tohim in the honest fervor of my devotion and my love--I thought ofMajor Fitz-David as a last resort. In the dis ordered state of mymind at that moment, it made no difference to me that the Majorhad already tried to reason with him, and had failed. In the faceof the facts I had a blind belief in the influence of his oldfriend, if his old friend could only be prevailed upon to supportmy view.

"Wait for me one moment," I said. "I want you to hear anotheropinion besides mine."

I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was notthere. I knocked at the door of communication with the frontroom. It was opened instantly by the Major himself. The doctorhad gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.

"Will you come and speak to Eustace?" I began. "If you will onlysay what I want you to say--"

Before I could add a word more I heard the house door opened andclosed. Major Fitz-David and Benjamin heard it too. They lookedat each other in silence.

I ran back, before the Major could stop me, to the room in whichI had seen Eustace. It was empty. My husband had left the house.