extraordinary that I could not think of withholding it from you; she
told me, my lord, that you had a wife living at the time you married
me, and that she was that wife."

Lord Glenfallen became ashy pale, almost livid; he made two or three
efforts to clear his voice to speak, but in vain, and turning suddenly
from me, he walked to the window; the horror and dismay, which, in
the olden time, overwhelmed the woman of Endor, when her spells
unexpectedly conjured the dead into her presence, were but types
of what I felt, when thus presented with what appeared to be almost
unequivocal evidence of the guilt, whose existence I had before so
strongly doubted. There was a silence of some moments, during which it
were hard to conjecture whether I or my companion suffered most. Lord
Glenfallen soon recovered his self command; he returned to the table,
again sat down and said--

"What you have told me has so astonished me, has unfolded such a
tissue of motiveless guilt, and in a quarter from which I had
so little reason to look for ingratitude or treachery, that your
announcement almost deprived me of speech; the person in question,
however, has one excuse, her mind is, as I told you before, unsettled.
You should have remembered that, and hesitated to receive as
unexceptionable evidence against the honour of your husband, the
ravings of a lunatic. I now tell you that this is the last time I
shall speak to you upon this subject, and, in the presence of the God
who is to judge me, and as I hope for mercy in the day of judgment,
I swear that the charge thus brought against me, is utterly false,
unfounded, and ridiculous; I defy the world in any point to taint my
honour; and, as I have never taken the opinion of madmen touching
your character or morals, I think it but fair to require that you will