The Bishop suspected nothing, nor did he notice the tremor in Jack's voice, or the lingering, emotional handgrip. He scarcely glanced at the pale, determined face. Mabel studied the pattern on her plate, and, when her lover offered his hand, bade him farewell with ridiculous nonchalance. If this was the parting of broken-hearted lovers their passion was made of shallow stuff, and the Bishop felt that he was justified in crushing the projected marriage.

To tell the truth, he was a little disappointed. In his fatherly heart he sympathized with the young people. He understood enough of feminine charm to feel that had he been in Jack's place, he could not have relinquished lovely Mabel Bannister so casually. For all her defects of character and family, she was the sort to drive young men mad. He had nerved himself for much trouble and argument with his son, and several finely rounded periods and enlightening speeches, specially prepared for Jack's edification in hours of youthful despair, looked like being unrequired.

The Bishop, much relieved at the passing of the storm, betook him to his day's duties; but Lady Hester prepared for action.

Mabel avoided her hostess all the morning under plea of final packing, yet twice sought her out, and with moist eyes asked some futile question. Each time she hovered like one on the brink of tears, or confession, yet mastered the impulse. At last, when it was time to watch the clock and talk of dressing, it became necessary to express the usual civilities, and she feelingly protested that she had been oh! so happy at the Palace, that she would never forget Lady Hester's kindness, and would ever remember her as the one dear, dear, sweet woman of her life.

Then she burst into a flood of tears--hysterical, shamefaced sobbing.

Lady Hester delivered her bomb.

"Mabel, I know your secret. You cannot deceive me. You are going up to town to marry Jack. You're not going home at all."

"Why do you say that?" gasped the girl.

"Because I know. You cannot deny it."

Taken off her guard and rendered helpless and tearful, Mabel took refuge in excuses.

"Oh! we love each other so--and he pleaded so hard. I wanted him to let me confide in you, but he refused. He is unshakable in his determination. Oh, Lady Hester, you can't know, you can't understand, what it is to love, as we love. Marrying as you did--and--and the Bishop not a young man----" she halted in her naïve rudeness and faltered, "you know what I mean. We are both young and--and this is the heyday of life, and----"

"You are both foolish and impatient. You are only quoting secondhand Jack's preposterous arguments."

"Nothing will move us from our purpose, even if we have to live apart all our lives. We are going to get married!"

"Mabel, Mabel, are you the nice, reasonable, clear-headed girl with a sense of humor that I grew so fond of? Don't you see the absurdity of what you are doing? Is there no such thing as patience and self-sacrifice for the sake of others?"

"I know, I know. Jack admits that it would have been better to wait--if we could have waited--and if we could be sure that things would come right in the end. But we're going to make things certain. We are not to live together--at present. At least----"

"Well?"

"We are going for a short honeymoon, of course." The girl buried her crimson face in her trembling hands, then flung herself into the elder woman's arms.

"And are you concealing this from your father?" asked Lady Hester.

"Yes--and no. That is, father has raised no objection to my engagement. I wrote to him about it."

"But he has never even seen Jack."

"Oh, you don't know father. When I wrote to him he just sent me a charming letter full of confidence in my good sense and judgment, and gave the engagement his blessing; and that's all he'll trouble about it. He says I mustn't expect more than a hundred pounds for my trousseau; so, you see, he can't make much fuss just because it's a little hurried."

"You are not giving him any opportunity to object by this rash acceptance of Jack's mad scheme."

"We cannot exist apart," sobbed the girl, "and we resolved yesterday that no living soul should come between us."

"Neither shall they, my dear," murmured Lady Hester, clasping the girl gently to her breast. "All I ask is, don't--don't marry secretly."

"But what does it matter?" pleaded the girl, a little frightened at the sudden intensity of the appeal, and breaking away to dry her tears.

Lady Hester paced the room for a few moments like a soul in torment. Her cheeks were white and her lips drawn with emotion.

"Oh, how can I make you understand? How can I frame words to warn you against a thing you may regret to your dying day? You must be saved from this folly at all costs. You must--you shall."

"Oh, Lady Hester, you won't interfere? Jack would never forgive you. It's too late now. The train starts in an hour. Please don't make me cry. I shall look horrid. I am resolved. I've given my word, my oath. Why should we ever regret?"

"Mabel," cried the elder woman, seizing her hand, "you must, of your own accord, withdraw from the position you have taken up. A secret marriage is an abomination of hell."

The words came out with great suddenness, and the dignified Lady Hester became strangely hysterical. She recovered herself with a great effort, seeing that her extravagance of speech had only startled the obstinate girl.

"You think I'm exaggerating. But if you only knew the misery, the lifelong regret that can follow a secret marriage. If I could only tell you my own story--oh! what am I saying? Can I find no arguments to convince you of your wickedness, Mabel? Oh, think--think!"

"Practically I have my father's consent. The rest is Jack's affair," replied the girl, proudly.

"Mabel, Mabel, can you keep a secret if I tell you something--something about myself that you don't know--that nobody knows? No, why should I? Oh, Mabel, will you believe me when I tell you that I speak upon this matter with authority--that I have known--I mean, that I have seen--the dreadful misery that can come from a secret marriage."

"I don't know what you mean," Mabel observed, calmly.

"Oh, girl, don't compel me to explain! Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you? Just now you questioned my knowledge of love and youthful passion. I was young as you once, and as foolish. I, like you, listened to honeyed, plausible pleading. It was to be secret, romantic, and beautiful. Secret, do you hear? Secret! And oh, the misery of it, the sickening deceit! Be brave and strong and face everything openly. If you mean to defy us all, be courageous and urge the same upon Jack. If you should ever regret, there will be no escape. Don't I know to my cost what it means? The very suggestion of secrecy sickens me. You might have to carry the burden of it to your grave. Girl, listen! I have been through it. I know."

"Do you mean that you were married secretly--married to the Bishop secretly?"

"No, no!" cried the hysterical woman with a rasping laugh. "It was before that--oh! what am I saying?"

"You mean that you were married before you became Mrs. Cardew!" exclaimed the girl in white astonishment.

"Did I say so? Well, if I said so much I must tell you more. I must justify myself. I am mad to speak of it, yet the desire gnaws at my heart. But you must swear eternal fidelity and faithfulness to me, Mabel, whatever the issue of this business may be. You mustn't mention to a living soul what I am going to tell you? You promise?"

"I promise, of course."

"Mabel, when I was your age I was very much like you, except that I lived a secluded life in Bath with two straight-laced, old-fashioned, rich, maiden aunts, to whom I was indebted for everything, and from whom I should one day inherit an income. I was an orphan. My father, a spendthrift, penniless peer, was dead. I never knew a mother. My life was very dull, and there came a man into it, who set my heart afire. My guardians objected to him--and wisely. He was nobody--worse, he was a fraud. He pleaded for a secret marriage, and--and I consented.

"You understand the gravity of what I am telling you? This is a secret, a sacred confidence. I have never spoken of it to any other woman. For some months, with the aid of a foolish, sentimental friend, I lived a double life, discovering each day a new defect in the idol I adored, until at last my eyes were opened. He proved to be a dreadful sham. He was fond of me, in his way, no doubt. He must have loved me, or he would never have let me go as he did. But he was a black sheep. Little by little the truth began to dawn on me that I had linked myself to one who had only his persuasive guile to recommend him, a villain, a fraud, an adventurer--worse, a thief."

"A thief."

"Yes. He confessed his vile life to me little by little. He wanted me to play the fascinating decoy; for he was a polished high-flying scoundrel. Fortunately for me, he put himself in my power by his confessions, and I was able to free myself and dictate my own terms--which were silence, and secrecy, and freedom. Freedom! He drove a hard bargain--God only knows how hard--but I knew that I must be free at any price, or be forever damned and ruined; and he let me go. A thief! Yes. He robbed me of all.--Ah, it shocks you, I can see. You didn't think that I had this tragedy in my life. You didn't know that I had suffered and been driven mad to the verge of self-destruction. But I worked out my own salvation. I left him, and to keep myself from going crazy, I plunged into a hard, grinding life of self-denial in the East End. I worked for others--the only way to forget private sorrows. Then, by chance, I was freed by a merciful Providence. My precious husband died, and my secret with him.... I rose to the surface again, and felt that I had a right to live. I had told nobody. Better for me perhaps if I had. I thought that I could bear it all alone, that the years would wither my secret. Foolish hope--each day it grows greener and greener. There are moments when I can scarcely keep my lips from screaming out the truth to my good, unsuspecting husband. A secret like this is a pestilent seed, it grows and grows and bears an endless crop of rank deceits. At first I bore it well. I had injured no one but myself, and--and another of whom I cannot speak. I took joy in life again after a fashion; and I bruised my heart to subtler tendernesses by ministering to the pains and sorrows of others more unfortunate. I imagined myself ennobled, purified. Then I met my present husband, who offered me a share in his hard thankless labors and his meagre vicar's home in a grim, sordid, squalid corner of the great city of sin and suffering. I refused at first. I could not confess because I knew that my story would destroy the dear, absurd ideals of me that he had formed--and he was my only friend. His wife was dead--she was a weak commonplace person. I was all to him that she could never have been, and he pleaded so forcibly, and--and I was terribly lonely. I had hidden my secret that I might go back to the life and the friends I had lost; only to find that I could not. I was another person."

"But you married Mr. Cardew--and you never told him?"

"Yes. Have I not said so? I stifled my conscience by weak unconvincing sophistries as you are doing. I married him. Oh, yes; I did it deliberately, thinking that I could atone by lightening his grey existence. At first I was rewarded beyond my deserts. You know how his fortunes changed ever for the better. The time for confession had gone by. I dared not speak. You see what infamy this abominable secrecy breeds."

"You ought not to have told me this," observed Mabel coldly and quietly.

"I had to tell some one. It has been gnawing at my heart for years. But I have abased myself to you to warn you and save you from a similar fate. Mabel, Mabel, you will not do this ridiculous, secret, wicked thing."

"There is no similarity in our two cases," the girl continued, remorselessly. "And I have my father's consent. Here is his letter."

Lady Hester, having gone too far, was frightened, and felt it incumbent upon her to recover her composure. She dried her tears, and tried to read the letter; but her eyes refused to see, and her senses to understand. Her hands dropped, and she turned again to Mabel.

"You will abandon this marriage? For my sake you will?" she urged plaintively. "Think how I have betrayed and humbled myself to point the moral----"

"Jack will be waiting for me. I cannot abandon it now. I can't--you must see that I can't. Jack would be broken-hearted. Everything is arranged, and Tom Nestor, of St. Jude's, is to perform the ceremony. So you see somebody knows and sympathizes. Tom Nestor thinks----"

"Mabel, you must, you must--you shall!" cried Lady Hester, hysterical with helplessness.

"No. I will not."

It was a very quiet and determined refusal.

"You must. If you persist I shall tell the Bishop," cried the other in petulant despair; "I won't see you ruin your own and Jack's life in this fashion." She walked threateningly towards the door. "I shall send a messenger at once, and----"

"If you tell I shall tell," replied Mabel, breathing hard. There was no mistaking her meaning.

Lady Hester collapsed into a chair, and covered her face with her hands.

"Girl, you are going to ruin, and you want to ruin me, too."

Mabel showed by her calm and determined manner that all further argument was useless. She was alarmed, too, by the unsought burden of responsibility. She refrained from any further reference to the outburst; and the other, scared by her quiet confidence, was humbled and abashed to the verge of panic. The girl's calm was forced, her farewell tearless and hard.

But Euston was still some distance away; and her heart was full of misgiving and uncertainty.