"My poor dear Julia!" he murmured; "my poor child!"

"Uncle," she said, checking her sobs by a great effort, "if you imagine I should tell any one--Johanna Carey even--what you have done, you wrong me. The name of Dobree is as dear to me as to Martin, and he was willing to marry a woman he detested in order to shield it. No, you are quite safe from disgrace as far as I am concerned."

"God in heaven bless you, my own Julia!" he ejaculated, fervently. "I knew your noble nature; but it grieves me the more deeply that I have so thoughtlessly wronged you. If I should live to get over this illness, I will explain it all to you. It is not so bad as it seems. But will you not be equally generous to Martin? Cannot you forgive him as you do me?"

"Uncle," she cried, "I could never, never marry a man who says he loves some one else more than me."

Her face was hidden in the pillows, and my father stroked her head, glancing at me contemptuously at the same time.

"I should think not, my girl!" he said, in a soothing tone; "but Martin will very soon repent. He is a fool just now, but he will be wise again presently. He has known you too long not to know your worth."

"Julia," I said, "I do know how good you are. You have always been generous, and you are so now. I owe you as much gratitude as my father does, and any thing I can do to prove it I am ready to do this day."

"Will you marry her before we leave Jersey?" asked my father.

"Yes," I answered.

The word slipped from me almost unawares, yet I did not wish to retract it. She was behaving so nobly and generously toward us both, that I was willing to do any thing to make her happy.

"Then, my love," he said, "you hear what Martin promises. All's well that ends well. Only make up your mind to put your proper pride away, and we shall all be as happy as we were before."

"Never!" she cried, indignantly. "I would not marry Martin here, hurriedly and furtively; no, not if you were dying, uncle!"

"But, Julia, if I were dying, and wished to see you united before my death!" he insinuated. A sudden light broke upon me. It was an ingenious plot--one at which I could not help laughing, mad as I was. Julia's pride was to be saved, and an immediate marriage between us effected, under cover of my father's dangerous illness. I did smile, in spite of my anger, and he caught it, and smiled back again. I think Julia became suspicious too.

"Martin," she said, sharpening her voice to address me, "do _you_ think your father is in any danger?"

"No, I do not," I answered, notwithstanding his gestures and frowns.

"Then that is at an end," she said. "I was almost foolish enough to think that I would yield. You don't know what this disappointment is to me. Everybody will be talking of it, and some of them will pity me, and the rest laugh at me. I am ashamed of going out-of-doors anywhere. Oh, it is too bad! I cannot bear it."

She was positively writhing with agitation; and tears, real tears I am sure, started into my father's eyes.

"My poor little Julia!" he said; "my darling! But what can be done if you will not marry Martin?"

"He ought to go away from Guernsey," she sobbed. "I should feel better if I was quite sure I should never see him, or hear of other people seeing him."

"I will go," I said. "Guernsey will be too hot for me when all this is known."

"And, uncle," she pursued, speaking to him, not me, "he ought to promise me to give up that girl. I cannot set him free to go and marry her--a stranger and adventuress. She will be his ruin. I think, for my sake, he ought to give her up."

"So he ought, and so he will, my love," answered my father. "When he thinks of all we owe to you, he will promise you that."

I pondered over what our family owed to Julia for some minutes. It was truly a very great debt. Though I had brought her into perhaps the most painful position a woman could be placed in, she was generously sacrificing her just resentment and revenge against my father's dishonesty, in order to secure our name from blot.

On the other hand, I had no reason to suppose Olivia loved me, and I should do her no wrong. I felt that, whatever it might cost me, I must consent to Julia's stipulation.

"It is the hardest thing you could ask me," I said, "but I will give her up. On one condition, however; for I must not leave her without friends.

I shall tell Tardif, if he ever needs help for Olivia, he must apply to me through my mother."

"There could be no harm in that," observed my father.

"How soon shall I leave Guernsey?" I asked.

"He cannot go until you are well again, uncle," she answered. "I will stay here to nurse you, and Martin must take care of your patients. We will send him word a day or two before we return, and I should like him to be gone before we reach home."

That was my sentence of banishment. She had only addressed me once during the conversation. It was curious to see how there was no resentment in her manner toward my father, who had systematically robbed her, while she treated me with profound wrath and bitterness.

She allowed him to hold her hand and stroke her hair; she would not have suffered me to approach her. No doubt it was harder for her to give up a lover than to lose the whole of her property.

She left us, to make the necessary arrangements for staying with my father, whose illness appeared to have lost suddenly its worst symptoms.

As soon as she was gone he regarded me with a look half angry, half contemptuous.

"What a fool you are!" he said. "You have no tact whatever in the management of women. Julia would fly back to you, if you only held up your finger."

"I have no wish to hold up my finger to her," I answered. "I don't think life with her would be so highly desirable."

"You thought so a few weeks ago," he said, "and you'll be a pauper without her."

"I was not going to marry her for her money," I replied. "A few weeks ago I cared more for her than for any other woman, except my mother, and she knew it. All that is changed now."

"Well well!" he said, peevishly, "do as you like. I wash my hands of the whole business. Julia will not forsake me if she renounces you, and I shall have need of her and her money. I shall cling to Julia."

"She will be a kind nurse to you," I remarked.

"Excellent!" he answered, settling himself languidly down among his pillows. "She may come in now and watch beside me; it will be the sort of occupation to suit her in her present state of feeling. You had better go out and amuse yourself in your own way. Of course you will go home to-morrow morning."

I would have gone back to Guernsey at once, but I found neither cutter nor yacht sailing that afternoon, so I was obliged to wait for the steamer next morning. I did not see Julia again, but Captain Carey told me she had consented that he should remain at hand for a day or two, to see if he could be of any use to her.

The report of my father's illness had spread before I reached home, and sufficiently accounted for our visit to Jersey, and the temporary postponement of my last trip to England before our marriage. My mother, Johanna, and I, kept our own counsel, and answered the many questions asked us as vaguely as the Delphic oracle.

Still an uneasy suspicion and suspense hung about our circle. The atmosphere was heavily charged with electricity, which foreboded storms.

It would be well for me to quit Guernsey before all the truth came out.

I wrote to Tardif, telling him I was going for an indefinite period to London, and that if any difficulty or danger threatened Olivia, I begged of him to communicate with my mother, who had promised me to befriend her as far as it lay in her power. My poor mother thought of her without bitterness, though with deep regret. To Olivia herself I wrote a line or two, finding myself too weak to resist the temptation. I said:

"MY DEAR OLIVIA: I told you I was about to be married to my cousin Julia Dobree; that engagement is at an end. I am obliged to leave Guernsey, and seek my fortune elsewhere. It will be a long time before I can see you again, if I ever have that great happiness. Whenever you feel the want of a true and tender friend, my mother is prepared to love you as if you were her own daughter. Think of me also as your friend. MARTIN DOBReE."

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD.

IN EXILE.

I left Guernsey the day before my father and Julia returned from Jersey.

My immediate future was not as black as it might have been. I was going direct to the house of my friend Jack Senior, who had been my chum both at Elizabeth College and at Guy's. He, like myself, had been hitherto a sort of partner to his father, the well-known physician, Dr. Senior of Brook Street. They lived together in a highly-respectable but gloomy residence, kept bachelor fashion, for they had no woman-kind at all belonging to them. The father and son lived a good deal apart, though they were deeply attached to one another. Jack had his own apartments, and his own guests, in the spacious house, and Dr. Senior had his.