I could see that on this side of my wedding-day there lay for him the chance that the disgrace might come at any moment.

On the other side was peace and safety.
The fear of the secret the Dawsons held possessed him so much that he had no thought for me, as he had had none for Theobald while he still believed that there was some sort of engagement between Theobald and me.
I confessed I had dreaded what Theobald would think of my marriage, not knowing the reason of it.

But my anxieties on that score were set at rest, for, as soon as possible after he had heard of the engagement, he wrote a most affectionate letter to me.

I could read in its effusiveness that he was so relieved to know of my marriage that he was not disposed to be critical over my bridegroom.

He sent me a present of a rug of leopard skins and some fine pieces of wrought silver work, and in a postscript he mentioned that there was some one he wanted us to welcome presently, a Miss Travers, a beauty--young, good, gifted, an heiress.
"She would be the same to me," he added in his round, schoolboy handwriting, "if she hadn't a penny; but I am glad for the sake of Aghadoe that she has money.