"I can't say, my love, that I approve of your
idea. Your story will decoy the reader into
feeling an interest in a woman who turns out
to be an imposter."

"No!" cried Rosamond, warmly. "A
true woman—a woman who never stooped to
a deception—a woman full of faults and
failings, but a teller of the truth at all hazards
and all sacrifices. Hear me out, Lenny,
before you judge." Hot tears rushed into her
eyes; but she dashed them away passionately,
and went on. "The wife shall grow up to
womanhood, and shall marry, in total
ignorance—mind that!—in total ignorance of her
real history. The sudden disclosure of the
truth shall overwhelm her—she shall find
herself struck by a calamity which she had
no hand in bringing about. She shall be
crushed, petrified, staggered in her very
reason by the discovery; it shall burst upon
her when she has no one but herself
to depend on; she shall have the power
of keeping it a secret from her husband
with perfect impunity; she shall be tried,
she shall be shaken in her mortal frailness,
by one moment of fearful temptation; she
shall conquer it, and, of her own free will, she
shall tell her husband all that she knows
herself. Now, Lenny, what do you call that
woman? an imposter?"

"No: a victim."

"Who goes of her own accord to the sacrifice?
and who is to be sacrificed?"

"I did not say that."

"What would you do with her, Lenny, if
you were writing the story? I mean, how
would you make her husband behave to her?
It is a question in which a man's nature is
concerned, and a woman is not competent to
decide it. I am perplexed about how to end
the story. How would you end it, love?"
As she ceased, her voice sank sadly to its
gentlest pleading tones. She came close
to him, and twined her fingers in his hair
fondly. "How would you end it, love?" she
repeated, stooping down till her trembling
lips just touched his forehead.

He moved uneasily in his chair, and
replied, "I am not a writer of novels,
Rosamond."

"But how would you act, Lenny, if you
were that husband?"

"It is hard for me to say," he answered.
"I have not your vivid imagination, my dear:
I have no power of putting myself, at a
moment's notice, into a position that is not
my own, and of knowing how I should act
in it."

"But suppose your wife was close to you—
as close as I am now? Suppose she had just
told you the dreadful secret, and was standing
before you—as I am standing now—with the
happiness of her whole life to come depending
on one kind word from your lips? Oh, Lenny,
you would not let her drop broken-hearted
at your feet? You would know, let her birth
be what it might, that she was still the same
faithful creature who had cherished, and
served, and trusted, and worshipped you
since her marriage-day, and who asked
nothing in return but to lay her head on
your bosom, and to hear you say that you
loved her? You would know that she had
nerved herself to tell the fatal secret, because
in her loyalty and love to her husband, she
would rather die forsaken and despised, than
live, deceiving him? You would know all
this, and you would open your arms to the
mother of your child, to the wife of your
first love, though she was the lowliest of
all lowly-born women in the estimation of
the world? Oh, you would, Lenny; I know
you would!"

"Rosamond! how your hands tremble;
how your voice alters! You are agitating
yourself about this supposed story of yours,
as if you were talking of real events."

"You would take her to your heart, Lenny?
You would open your arms to her without
an instant of unworthy doubt?"

"Hush! hush! I hope I should."

"Hope? only hope? Oh, think again, love
think again; and say you know you should!"

"Must I, Rosamond? Then I do say it."

She drew back as the words passed his
lips, and took the letter from the table.

"You have not yet asked me, Lenny, to
read the letter that I found in the Myrtle
Room. I offer to read it now, of my own
accord." She trembled a little as she spoke
those few decisive words, but her utterance
of them was clear and steady, as if her
consciousness of being now irrevocably pledged
to make the disclosure, had strengthened
her at last to dare all hazards and end all
suspense.

Her husband turned towards the place
from which the sound of her voice had
reached him, with a mixed expression of
perplexity and surprise in his face. "You pass
so suddenly from one subject to another," he
said, "that I hardly know how to follow you.
What in the world, Rosamond, takes you, at
one jump, from a romantic argument about a
situation in a novel, to the plain, practical
business of reading an old letter?"

"Perhaps there is a closer connection
between the two, than you suspect," she
answered.

"A closer connection? What connection?
I don't understand."

"The letter will explain."

"Why the letter? Why should you not
explain?"

She stole one anxious look at his face,
and saw that a sense of something serious
to come was now overshadowing his mind
for the first time.

"Rosamond!" he exclaimed, "there is
some mystery——"

"There are no mysteries between us two,"
she interposed quickly. "There never have
been any, love; there never shall be." She
moved a little nearer to him to take her old