"I confide more willingly in you, Dorothy, because, like me you have realized the great agony of having loved and lost. Yes, I loved as my own soul a young girl as pure and artless as yourself. She held a dependent and subordinate situation, and was far beneath me in rank. But beauty is a great equalizer, and I never for a moment considered that noble creature my inferior. I sought her love, and won her whole heart, but circumstances prevented me from taking her by the hand, and publicly acknowledging her as my wife to the world, and I sacrificed to the Moloch of wealth and power her happiness and my own, and blasted for ever the only wealth she possessed, a pure and unsullied name."
"Ah! how indeed. I ask myself a thousand times a-day the same torturing question. The fear of what people would say, Dorothy--the dread of poverty--of loss of caste--for I was not at that time an elder son, made me a coward and a fool. I left her--left the woman I adored to struggle through the difficulty in which I had placed her, single-handed and alone.
"I was appointed _attaché_ to a foreign embassy, and left England for several years, and was only recalled to inherit my present title, and all the large property that fell to me by the death of an uncle, and that of my eldest brother. No longer deterred from doing her justice by the base fear of losing these advantages, I sought her in her old home, my mother having dismissed her in disgrace from her service. Here I found that her cruel grandmother had driven her forth into the streets, and all traces of her had been lost. For seventeen years I have sought her sorrowing through the world, to make reparation for my selfishness and cruelty; but her fate remains a mystery, and the only clue that I have obtained of her probable history, fills my mind with shame and remorse. I can no longer wipe this foul stain from her memory if I would.
"You look at me in surprise and horror, Dorothy. Can you still think me a good and great man. See how you have been deceived in your estimate of me."
Tears were in the Earl's eyes and on his pale cheeks. Dorothy looked down to hide her own.
"My lord," she said, in a soft low voice, "you have been very unfortunate, and perhaps are less guilty than you think yourself, and oh, I pity you with my whole heart."