She obeyed, as she ever did, the impulse of the moment, and read what
follows:

"Constance--As I write that word how many remembrances rush upon me!--for
how many years has that name been a talisman to my heart, waking its
emotions at will! You are the first woman I ever really loved: you
rejected me, yet I could not disdain you. You became another's but my
love could not desert you. Your hand wrote the history of my life after
the period when we met,--my habits--my thoughts--you influenced and
coloured them all! And now, Constance, you are free; and I love you more
fervently than ever! And you--yes, you would not reject me now; you have
grown wiser, and learned the value of a heart. And yet the same Fate that
divided us hitherto will divide us now; all obstacles but one are passed
away--of that one you shall hear and judge.

"When we parted, Constance, years ago, I did not submit tamely to the
burning remembrance you bequeathed me; I sought to dissipate your image,
and by wooing others to forget yourself. Need I say, that to know another
was only to remember you the more? But among the other and far less
worthy objects of my pursuit was one whom, had I not seen you first, I
might have loved as ardently as I do you; and in the first flush of
emotion, and the heat of sudden events, I imagined that I did so love her.
She was an orphan, a child in years and in the world; and I was all to
her--I am, all to her. She is not mine by the ties of the Church; but I
have pledged a faith to her equally sacred and as strong. Shall I break
that faith? shall I betray that trust? shall I crush a heart that has
always been mine--mine more tenderly than yours, rich in a thousand gifts
and resources, ever was or ever can be? Shall I,--sworn to protect
her--I, who have already robbed her of fame and friends, rob her now of
father, brother, lover, husband, the world itself,--for I am all to her?