"Though I had never pierced those regions before, my good or evil fate took me at once to a room which I saw at one glance to be hers. The boxes waiting to be carried down, the tags and ends of ribbons that I recognized, the nameless something which speaks of one particular personality and no other, all were there to assure me that I stood in the chamber which for six months or more had palpitated with the breath of the one being I loved.
"But of that I dared not think; it was no time for dreams; and only stopping to see that her bonnet had been taken, but her gloves left, I hurried down again and out of the house.
"An impulse which I cannot understand took me to Edwin Urquhart's house, or, rather, to that portion of a house which he had hired for his use since he had been looking forward to his marriage with Miss Dudleigh. Why I should go there I cannot say, unless jealousy whispered that only in this place could she hope for one final word with him, as he and his bride stopped at the door for his portion of the baggage. Be this as it may, I turned neither to right nor left till I came to his house, and when I had reached it I found that, with all my haste, I was too late, for not a soul was in its empty rooms, while far down the street which leads to the bridge I saw a carriage disappearing, which, from the wagon following it so closely, I knew to be the one containing Urquhart and his bride.
"'She has not been here,' thought I, 'or I should have met her, unless—' and my eye stole with a certain shrinking terror toward the river which skirted along the garden at the back—'unless'— But even my thoughts stopped here. I would not, could not, think of what, if it were true, would end all things for me.
"Leaving this place, I wandered aimlessly through the streets, studying each face that I met for intimations which should guide me in my search. If not a madman, I was near enough to one to make the memory of that hour hideous to me; and when at last, worn out as much by my emotions as by the countless steps I had taken, I returned to my house for a bite and sup, something in the sight of its desolation overpowered me, and yielding to a despair which assured me that I should never again see her in this world, I sank on the floor inert and powerless, and continued thus till morning, without movement and almost without consciousness.
"Fatal repose! And yet I do not know if I should call it so. It only robbed me of a few hours less of conscious misery. For when I roused, when I became again myself, and looked about my house, there on the floor, underneath a curtain window which had been left unlatched, I saw a letter containing these words:
'Honored and Much Abused Friend:—When you read this, Marah will be no more. After all that has passed—after our broken marriage and the departure of my cousin—life has become insupportable; and, believing that you would rather know me dead than miserable, I ventured to write you these words, and ask you to forgive me, now that I am gone.
'I loved him: let that explain everything.
'Despairingly yours,
'Marah Leighton.'
"With shrieks I tore from the house. Marah dying! Marah dead! I would see about that. Racing down to the gate, I paused. Some one was leaning on it. It was Cæsar, and at the first glimpse I had of his face I knew I was too late—that all was over, and that the whole town knew it.