"What, is he dead ?" he said.
"No, no, not dead: but he never was my husband." He let go her hand, and, interrupting her, said sharply, "Indeed, madam, if this carpenter never was your husband, I see no cause why _I_ should be.

If a lady, who hath been for twenty years the mistress of a miserable country boor, cannot find it in her heart to put up with the protection of a nobleman--a sovereign's representative--she may seek a husband elsewhere!" "I was no man's mistress except yours," sobbed Catherine, wringing her hands and sobbing wildly; "but, O Heaven! I deserved this.

Because I was a child, and you saw, and ruined, and left me--because, in my sorrow and repentance, I wished to repair my crime, and was touched by that man's love, and married him--because he too deceives and leaves me--because, after loving you--madly loving you for twenty years--I will not now forfeit your respect, and degrade myself by yielding to your will, you too must scorn me! It is too much--too much--O Heaven!" And the wretched woman fell back almost fainting.
Max was almost frightened by this burst of sorrow on her part, and was coming forward to support her; but she motioned him away, and, taking from her bosom a letter, said, "If it were light, you could see, Max, how cruelly I have been betrayed by that man who called himself my husband.

Long before he married me, he was married to another.

This woman is still living, he says; and he says he leaves me for ever." At this moment the moon, which had been hidden behind Westminster Abbey, rose above the vast black mass of that edifice, and poured a flood of silver light upon the little church of St.Margaret's, and the spot where the lovers stood.