I never imagined that you had been deceived.

The duchess told me that you knew the whole history of my father's crime, that you were familiar with every detail of it, but that you wished me never to mention it--never even ever so remotely to allude to it.

I thought it strange, Norman, that one in your position should be willing to overlook so terrible a blot; but she told me your love for me was so great that you could not live without me.

She told me even more--that I must try to make my own life so perfect that the truest nobility of all, the nobility of virtue, might be mine." "Did she really tell you that ?" asked Lord Arleigh wonderingly.
"Yes; and, Norman, she said that you would discuss the question with me once, and once only--that would be on my wedding-day.

On that day you would ask for and I should tell the whole history of my father's crime; and after that it was to be a dead-letter, never to be named between us." "And you believed her ?" he said.
"Yes, as I believe you.