a glance. Without untying the packet Hilda could see the nature of those letters. "My dearest love," "My life," "My ever beloved." Such words as those scattered on the folded pages told the character of the correspondence.
She had known from the first, from his own lips, that he had cared for another woman, that he had been in some manner bound to that other woman—his future life so compromised that he must needs win his release from that tie before he could offer himself honourably to his new love. She had known this, and yet the sight of those impassioned phrases in the hand of her betrothed tortured her almost to madness. She flung the packet from her, flung it at her rival's feet, as if it had been some loathsome reptile that had fastened on her hand.
"It is shameful, abominable!" she cried. "Such words as those written to another man's wife! I will read no more—not a line—not a syllable."
"But you shall read, or you shall hear," said Valeria, taking up the packet. "You shall know what kind of vows this man made to me, this man whom you are going to marry."
She drew out a letter haphazard, and thrust it into Hilda's hand—forced her to read by sheer strength of will, watching her with flashing eyes all the while.
Hilda read words of such passionate vehemence that it was difficult to believe that transient feelings could have inspired them—words which told of rapturous delight in a reciprocal love, and fondest hope of future union; words that made light of all things in earth and heaven as weighed against that all-absorbing love. She read of that scheme of the future in which the ultimate marriage of the lovers was counted on as a certainty.
And it was for her sake he had abandoned this old dream—this plan of a life so long cherished. It was for her, an obscure, country-bred girl, who could bring him neither fame nor fortune, that he had surrendered all hope of calling this brilliant high-born woman his wife.
And now the hour had come when he might have claimed her, when, his years of servitude being over, he had but to wait the brief span society demands, before he faced the world with this woman by his side, the sharer of her social status, her ample means. Surely this would have been a happy fate for him, if there were any truth in these words of his, words which seemed to scorch Hilda's brain as she stood, silent, motionless, poring over them.
"You see," said Lady Valeria, after a long silence, "that once at least your lover loved me."
"I thought that once in such things meant for ever," answered Hilda, with a quiet sadness, as of one who speaks of the dead. "Yet the man who wrote this letter has talked
