O, if I had known the truth--if I had only known!" "_You_ heard me, Ellen?
You were there ?" Marian exclaimed, surprised.

She was, as yet, entirely ignorant of Ellen's marriage, and had been too much bewildered by the suddenness of her escape to wonder how the bailiff's daughter had happened to be so near at hand in that hour of deadly peril.
"Yes, yes, dear Mrs.Holbrook; I was there, and I did not help you.

But never mind that now; tell me the rest of your story; tell me how your father acted that night." "He was with me alone for about ten minutes; he came to give me a last chance, he said.

If I liked to leave my husband for ever, and go to America with him, I might do so; but before he let me out of that place, he must have my solemn oath that I would make no attempt to see my husband; that I would never again communicate with any one I had known up to that time; that I would begin a new life, with him, my father, for my sole protector.

I had had some experience of the result of opposing him, he said, and he now expected to find me reasonable.
"You can imagine my answer, Ellen.