"MY DEAR MARTIN: I know all now. Johanna has told me. When you spoke to me so hurriedly and unexpectedly, this afternoon, I could not bear to hear another word. But now I am calm, and I can think it all over quite quietly.

"It is an infatuation, Martin. Johanna says so as well as I, and she is never wrong. It is a sheer impossibility that you, in your sober senses, should love a strange person, whose very name you do not know, better than you do me, your cousin, your sister, your _fiancee_, whom you have known all your life, and loved. I am quite sure of that, with a very true affection.

"It vexes me to write about that person in any connection with yourself. Emma spoke of her in her last letter from Sark; not at all in reference to you, however. She is so completely of a lower class, that it would never enter Emma's head that you could see any thing in her. She said there was a rumor afloat that Tardif was about to marry the girl you had been attending, and that everybody in the island regretted it. She said it would be a _mesalliance_ for him, Tardif! What then would it be for you, a Dobree? No; it is a delusion, an infatuation, which will quickly pass away. I cannot believe you are so weak as to be taken in by mere prettiness without character; and this person--I do not say so harshly, Martin--has no character, no name. Were you free you could not marry her. There is a mystery about her, and mystery usually means shame. A Dobree could not make an adventuress his wife.

Then you have seen so little of her. Three times, since the week you were there in March! What is that compared to the years we have spent together? It is impossible that in your heart of hearts you should love her more than me.

"I have been trying to think what you would do if all is broken off between us. We could not keep this a secret in Guernsey, and everybody would blame you. I will not ask you to think of my mortification at being jilted, for people would call it that. I could outlive that. But what are you to do? We cannot go on again as we used to do. I must speak plainly about it. Your practice is not sufficient to maintain the family in a proper position for the Dobrees; and if I go to live alone at the new house, as I must do, what is to become of my uncle and aunt? I have often considered this, and have been glad the difficulty was settled by our marriage. Now every thing will be unsettled again.

"I did not intend to say any thing about myself; but, O Martin! you do not know the blank that it will be to me. I have been so happy since you asked me to be your wife. It was so pleasant to think that I should live all my life in Guernsey, and yet not be doomed to the empty, vacant lot of an unmarried woman. You think that perhaps Johanna is happy single? She is content--good women ought to be content; but, I tell you, I would gladly exchange her contentment for Aunt Dobree's troubles, with her pride and happiness in you. I have seen her troubles clearly; and I say, Martin, I would give all Johanna's calm, colorless peace for her delight in her son.

"Then I cannot give up the thought of our home, just finished and so pretty. It was so pleasant this afternoon before you came in with your dreadful thunder-bolt. I was thinking what a good wife I would be to you; and how, in my own house, I should never be tempted into those tiresome tempers you have seen in me sometimes. It was your father often who made me angry, and I visited it upon you, because you are so good-tempered. That was foolish of me. You could not know how much I love you, how my life is bound up in you, or you would have been proof against that person in Sark.

"I think it right to tell you all this now, though it is not in my nature to make professions and demonstrations of my love. Think of me, of yourself, of your poor mother. You were never selfish, and you can do noble things. I do not say it would be noble to marry me; but it would be a noble thing to conquer an ignoble passion. How could Martin Dobree fall in love with an unknown adventuress?

"I shall remain in the house all day to-morrow, and if you can come to see me, feeling that this has been a dream of folly from which you have awakened, I will not ask you to own it.

That you come at all will be a sign to me that you wish it forgotten and blotted out between us, as if it had never been.

"With true, deep love for you, Martin, believe me still

"Your affectionate JULIA."

I pondered over Julia's letter as I dressed. There was not a word of resentment in it. It was full of affectionate thought for us all. But what reasoning! I had not known Olivia so long as I had known her, therefore I could not love her as truly!

A strange therefore!

I had scarcely had leisure to think of Olivia in the hurry and anxiety of the last twenty-four hours. But now "that person in Sark," the "unknown adventuress," presented itself very vividly to my mind. Know her! I felt as if I knew every tone of her voice and every expression of her face; yet I longed to know them more intimately. The note she had written to me a few weeks ago I could repeat word for word, and the handwriting seemed far more familiar to me even than Julia's. There was no doubt my love for her was very different from my affection for Julia; and if it was an infatuation, it was the sweetest, most exquisite infatuation that could ever possess me.

Yet there was no longer any hesitation in my mind as to what I must do.

Julia knew all now. I had told her distinctly of my love for Olivia, and she would not believe it. She appeared wishful to hold me to my engagement in spite of it; at any rate, so I interpreted her letter. I did not suppose that I should not live it down, this infatuation, as they chose to call it. I might hunger and thirst, and be on the point of perishing; then my nature would turn to other nutriment, and assimilate it to its contracted and stultified capacities.

After all there was some reason in the objections urged against Olivia.

The dislike of all insulated people against foreigners is natural enough; and in her case there was a mystery which I must solve before I could think of asking her to become my wife. Ask her to become my wife!

That was impossible now. I had chosen my wife months before I saw her.

I went mechanically through the routine of my morning's work, and it was late in the afternoon before I could get away to ride to the Vale. My mother knew where I was going, and gazed wistfully into my face, but without otherwise asking me any questions. At the last moment, as I touched Madam's bridle, I looked down at her standing on the door-step.

"Cheer up, mother!" I said, almost gayly, "it will all come right."

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.

ALL WRONG.

By this time you know that I could not ride along the flat, open shore between St. Peter-Port and the Vale without having a good sight of Sark, though it lay just a little behind me. It was not in human nature to turn my back doggedly upon it. I had never seen it look nearer; the channel between us scarcely seemed a mile across. The old windmill above the Havre Gosselin stood out plainly. I almost fancied that but for Breckhou I could have seen Tardif's house, where my darling was living.

My heart leaped at the mere thought of it. Then I shook Madam's bridle about her neck, and she carried me on at a sharp canter toward Captain Carey's residence.

I saw Julia standing at a window up-stairs, gazing down the long white road, which runs as straight as an arrow through the Braye du Valle to L'Ancresse Common.

She must have seen Madam and me half a mile away; but she kept her post motionless as a sentinel, until I jumped down to open the gate. Then she vanished.

The servant-man was at the door by the time I reached it, and Johanna herself was on the threshold, with her hands outstretched and her face radiant. I was as welcome as the prodigal son, and she was ready to fall on my neck and kiss me.

"I felt sure of you," she said, in a low voice. "I trusted to your good sense and honor, and they have not failed you. Thank God you are come!

Julia has neither ate nor slept since I brought her here."

She led me to her own private sitting-room, where I found Julia standing by the fireplace, and leaning against it, as if she could not stand alone. When I went up to her and took her hand, she flung her arms round my neck, and clung to me, in a passion of tears. It was some minutes before she could recover her self-command. I had never seen her abandon herself to such a paroxysm before.

"Julia, my poor girl!" I said, "I did not think you would take it so much to heart as this."

"I shall come all right directly," she sobbed, sitting down, and trembling from head to foot. "Johanna said you would come, but I was not sure."

"Yes, I am here," I answered, with a very dreary feeling about me.

"That is enough," said Julia; "you need not say a word more. Let us forget it, both of us. You will only give me your promise never to see her, or speak to her again."

It might be a fair thing for her to ask, but it was not a fair thing for me to promise. Olivia had told me she had no friends at all except Tardif and me; and if the gossip of the Sark people drove her from the shelter of his roof, I should be her only resource; and I believed she would come frankly to me for help.

"Olivia quite understands about my engagement to you," I said. "I told her at once that we were going to be married, and that I hoped she would find a friend in you."'

"A friend in me, Martin!" she exclaimed, in a tone of indignant surprise; "you could not ask me to be that!"

"Not now, I suppose," I replied; "the girl is as innocent and blameless as any girl living; but I dare say you would sooner befriend the most good-for-nothing Jezebel in the Channel Islands."

"Yes, I would," she said. "An innocent girl indeed! I only wish she had been killed when she fell from the cliff."

"Hush!" I cried, shuddering at the bare mention of Olivia's death; "you do not know what you say. It is worse than useless to talk about her. I came to ask you to think no more of what passed between us yesterday."

"But you are going to persist in your infatuation," said Julia; "you can never deceive me. I know you too well. Oh, I see that you still think the same of her'"

"You know nothing about her," I replied.

"And I shall take care I never do," she interrupted, spitefully.

"So it is of no use to go on quarrelling about her," I continued, taking no notice of the interruption. "I made up my mind before I came here that I must see as little as possible of her for the future. You must understand, Julia, she has never given me a particle of reason to suppose she loves me."

"But you are still in love with her?" she asked.

I stood biting my nails to the quick, a trick I had while a boy, but one that had been broken off by my mother's and Julia's combined vigilance.

Now the habit came back upon me in full force, as my only resource from speaking.

"Martin," she said, with flashing eyes, and a rising tone in her voice, which, like the first shrill moan of the wind, presaged a storm, "I will never marry you until you can say, on your word of honor, that you love that person no longer, and are ready to promise to hold no further communication with her. Oh! I know what my poor aunt has had to endure, and I will not put up with it."

"Very well, Julia," I answered, controlling myself as well as I could, "I have only one more word to say on this subject. I love Olivia, and, as far as I know myself, I shall love her as long as I live. I did not come here to give you any reason for supposing my mind is changed as to her. If you consent to be my wife, I will do my best, God helping me, to be most true, most faithful to you; and God forbid I should injure Olivia in thought by supposing she could care for me other than as a friend. But my motive for coming now is to tell you some particulars about your property, which my father made known to me only last night."

It was a miserable task for me; but I told her simply the painful discovery I had made. She sat listening with a dark and sullen face, but betraying not a spark of resentment, so far as her loss of fortune was concerned.