"Excuse me. In order to make you understand my position, I must beg you
to indulge me in a little retrospection. You are, doubtless, aware that
at one time I was engaged to Miss Margaret Harrison?"

"Such was the rumor, sir."

"It was correct. I loved her deeply, fondly, with my whole soul--just as
I love her still--in spite of all."

"Mr. Trevlyn," said Castrani, with cold reproof in his voice, "you have a
wife."

"I am aware of it, but that does not change my feelings. I have tried to
kill all regard for Margaret Harrison, but it is impossible. I can
control it, but I cannot make it die. My wife knows it all--I told her
freely--and knowing it, she was willing to bear my name. For some reason,
unknown to me, unexplained by Margaret, she cast me off. I had seen her
only the day before the fatal note reached me--had held her in my arms,
and felt her kiss upon my lips." He stopped, controlling his emotion, and
went on resolutely. "The next day I received a letter, from her--a brief,
cold, almost scornful letter. She renounced me utterly--she would never
meet me again, but as a stranger. She need make no explanation, she said;
my own conscience would tell me why she could no longer be anything to
me. As if I had committed some crime. I should have sought her, from one
end of the earth to the other, and won from her an explanation of her
rejection, had it not been for the force of circumstances, which revealed
to me that she left for the North, in the early express--with you--or
equivalent to that. She entered the train at the same time, and you were
both in the same car. That fact, coupled with your well-known devotion to