When Shadows Die by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

"‘My dearest Elfrida, for my beastly stupidity I deserve all the reproaches you can heap upon me. But not the utter reproach of complicity in the deception that was practiced upon you. I never suspected Saviola of a design to deceive you. But the Italian was too deep for me. I went to insure you against mistake, not deception. But, as I say, the Italian was too deep for me.'

"‘What do you mean? ' I cried.

"‘Saviola had studied the route to Scotland, with the design to deceive you. There were two stations on that route of similar names. One was Kelton, in Northumberland. The other was Kilton, in Scotland. Saviola took tickets for us all to Kelton, when he made us believe that they were for Kilton. We went by the night train, you remember. We got out at Kelton, near the border on the English side, believing all the time that it was Kilton, on the Scottish side. There, in England, you were married regularly enough; but because it was in England, and you were a minor marrying without the consent of your parents or guardians, therefore the marriage was illegal, null and void.'

"‘Did Saviola tell you this when you met in Paris?'

"‘Yes, but I had discovered the fact, to my great dismay and distress, before that.'

"‘When, and how?'

"‘In September I was going up to Scotland for a week's shooting. I went by the same train that had carried us, but in the daytime. When we stopped at Kelton I recognized the station at which we had got out, the hotel where we had stopped for breakfast, and the distant church, with the manse beside it, where the marriage ceremony had been performed. And yet I knew then-as I had not known on that fatal night-that we had not crossed the border.'

"‘Then we were married in England? ' I wailed.

"‘Yes! To settle the point, I asked a fellow passenger how far we were from the Scottish border. He told me just five miles. Still, I did not then suspect Saviola of having wilfully betrayed us. I thought he had confused the two-Kelton and Kilton-and had made a fatal mistake. And I cursed my own stupidity in not having foreseen and prevented it. I determined to seek you both out and have the mistake rectified by another and a regular marriage ceremony as soon as possible. I did not know where to find you, nor of whom to inquire for you, since your friends were all in the Canary Islands. It was by accident only that I met him in Paris, and learned the truth from his own lips, as I have already told you.'

"He ceased to speak.

"Overwhelmed as I was I tried to make some little stand for my own dignity and self-respect. I said:

"‘The marriage-in spite of quibbles-was a marriage in the sight of God, if not in the sight of man. The good old minister who pronounced the nuptial benediction over two young people who-at that time, at least, loved each other, and who were free to wed-married us as lawfully, as sacredly as all the united state and church could have married us! Repudiated and abandoned as I may be, I am still the wife of Luigi Saviola. And I will be true to myself. Though he has sacrilegiously wedded another woman, he is still my husband, and I will be faithful to him.'

"I had by this time recovered my self-possession, and felt some regret at the paroxysm of emotion into which I had been thrown.

"‘Elfrida,' he said, ‘this is sheer fatuity. You have no more right to call yourself the wife of Prince Saviola than you have to call yourself the consort of the czar. You are not a wife. You are free-free to accept the love and devotion that I lay at your feet.'

"I felt my heart rising again in wrath. I did not wish again to lose my self-control. I commanded myself, and, with forced calmness and some sarcasm, inquired:

"‘Do I understand you to be offering me marriage Mr. Anglesea?'

"He took his hand from the back of my chair, over which he had been leaning, and walked away with a look of petulance and annoyance. Presently he returned to my side, and said:

"‘Dearest Elfrida, men do not offer marriage under these circumstances.'

"I turned and looked him straight in the face as I demanded:

"‘What, then, is it that you do offer your friend's sister?'