"Then there is no hope?" was her slow and despairing reply.
"None at present, Imogene," was his stern, almost as despairing, answer.
As Mr. Orcutt sat over his lonely hearth that evening, a servant brought to him the following letter:
Dear Friend,—It is not fit that I should remain any longer under your roof. I have a duty before me which separates me forever from the friendship and protection of honorable men and women. No home but such as I can provide for myself by the work of my own hands shall henceforth shelter the disgraced head of Imogene Dare. Her fate, whatever it may prove to be, she bears alone, and you, who have been so kind, shall never suffer from any association with one whose name must henceforth become the sport of the crowd, if not the execration of the virtuous. If your generous heart rebels at this, choke it relentlessly down. I shall be already gone when you read these lines, and nothing you could do or say would make me come back. Good-by, and may Heaven grant you forgetfulness of one whose only return to your benefactions has been to make you suffer almost as much as she suffers herself.
As Mr. Orcutt read these last lines, District Attorney Ferris was unsealing the anonymous missive which has already been laid before my readers.
XXI.
HEART'S MARTYRDOM.
Oh that a man might know
The end of this day's business, ere it come;
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known!—Julius Cæsar.