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136 who had just brought in a fresh supply. 'And now, Arden, why the devil don't you ask why I brought you here?'

"Ay, it was with a smile that I assured him that I waited his good pleasure. He was too anxious to share the weight of his secret to have much delicacy in its disclosure. But let me hurry over the accursed truth.

"He had been some months privately married to Beatrice—how he could have been such a fool he did not know—he was sure he repented it enough now; 'and this very morning,' he continued, ' I have had a letter from my uncle, entreating my return; he has lost his eldest son, and Madeline is sole heiress of his splendid fortune. He offers me her hand, and this union would still keep the property in our family; our estates touch, and he says she is grown up the prettiest blue-eyed fairy in the world. And to think that I have, like an idiot as I am, thrown myself away on the daughter of an old Italian doctor, who torments me out of my life to acknowledge our marriage! Arden, do contrive something—what shall I do?'

"The devil found me both words and utterance. 'I really cannot see the affair in the serious light