"But why, my dear young friend, do you close your heart to earthly hope? Surely, when your husband returns, you may anticipate a joyful reunion."
"When he returns! Alas! his will be a life-long exile. Believing what he does, he will never, never return."
"But you have written and explained every thing?"
"How can I write,—when I know not where to direct, when I know not to what region he has wandered, or what resting-place he has found?"
"But Mr. Harland!" said she, with a look of troubled surprise. "You might learn through him?"
"Mrs. Linwood has written repeatedly to Mr. Harland, and received no answer. She concluded that he had left the city, but knew not how to ascertain his address."
"Then you did not know that he had gone to India? I thought,—I believed,—is it possible that you are not aware"—
"Of what?" I exclaimed, catching hold of her arm, for my brain reeled and my sight darkened.
"That Mr. Linwood accompanied him," she answered, turning pale at the agitation her words excited. To India! that distant, deadly clime! To India, without one farewell, one parting token to her whom he left apparently on the brink of the grave!
By the unutterable anguish of that moment, I knew the delusion that had veiled my motives. I had thought it was only to reclaim a lost parent that I had come, but I found it was the hope of meeting the deluded wanderer, more than filial piety, that had urged my departure.