Mysie stared at them for a moment, thinking that it might possibly be a joke; but their guilty looks showed that it was a stern reality. Clutching the back of her chair, and mustering all her natural strength of character, she said, in a voice preternaturally calm:
"So, Mr Dallas, you have found out that you can't give me the affection of a husband! Well, I'll manage to do without it; and at any rate I'm glad that you have told me in time. As for you, you serpent in the form of a woman, I'll leave you to the punishment of your own conscience. And if you have not got such an article, as seems very likely, it will be punishment enough to be tethered for life to that fickle fool that stands beside you." So saying, she passed out of the room, leaving the pair standing with guilt-stricken countenances.
It is well known that the lower animals often attack and even torment one of their own kind when he is sick or wounded. A good deal of this bestial habit still lingers among men. When distress falls upon us, our friends often aggravate that distress. They do not know, perhaps, that they are doing it, but still they do it. Had Mysie been left to herself, her own good sense and courage would have buoyed her up, and enabled her to trample her sorrow under foot. But when she went abroad, people would not allow her to forget that sorrow. Those who were her friends condoled with her. Those who were not her friends stared at her. She felt that the town was in a buzz about her affairs. And at home the tormenting process was even worse. Her mother bemoaned the slight that had fallen on the family. Her brother breathed forth threatenings against the features and limbs of the culprit. Her father talked incessantly about raising an action for breach of promise. In vain she told her mother and brother that they would best keep up the family honour, not by bewailings and threatenings, but by looking as if they thought the rupture of the engagement a blessed release. In vain she told her father that legal proceedings were not to be thought of, and that while they might be a punishment to Dallas, they would be a far greater punishment to herself. Morning, noon, and night, the worrying went on.
At length her highly-strung nervous system, which had buoyed her up above all her other troubles, fairly broke down. She lost the power of sleeping. She lost her appetite. A strange nausea took possession of her, and everything grew distasteful, and life itself became an intolerable burden. From having been the embodiment of happy good-nature, she changed into a woe-begone hypochondriac. And people unknowingly aggravated her disease by expressing astonishment at her altered appearance, by telling her that she looked very ill, and by bursting forth afresh into recriminations against the man that had jilted her. Then there came a morning when her room was found empty, and a note upon the dressing-table told her parents that she could bear the atmosphere of Sandyriggs no longer, and that she was off to a place where no one knew her, and where she would have perfect peace.
Blank consternation fell upon the family. When they recovered a little, the brother swore that he would go and smash Dallas, the author of all their woe; and the mother's impulse was to run abroad and get sympathy and advice from her neighbours. But the father, with far more tact and knowledge of the world, insisted that the first thing to be done at all hazards, was to prevent any scandal. They must not of their own accord say anything about the matter, and if any question should be asked, they must answer that she had gone to a friend's for a complete rest. Meanwhile they must try to find her.
This was no easy task. The very fact that they could not talk about it prevented them from getting any assistance from the outside world. For two or three days the brother, Donald, under pretence of paying ceremonious calls, made the round of all their intimate friends and relatives in the neighbouring farm towns and villages; but every night he returned worn-out, and with a despairing shake of the head intimated that he had got no trace of the lost one.
Then there flashed into the father's mind the thought that she would likely be in Edinburgh; and he wondered that it had never occurred to him before. Why, a large town was the very place where a person, sick of being stared at and worried by inquisitive neighbours, would find rest; and they had a cousin there in whose house she would very likely get a lodging. Accordingly, the father and son set out at once, crossed the Firth in the ferry-boat from Pettycur to Leith, and then walked up Leith Walk to Edinburgh. They went to the cousin's address in Broughton Street, but found that she had moved at the last term, and none of the neighbours could tell where she had gone. Wearied out and disheartened, they put up at a hotel at Greenside, where they both passed an anxious and a restless night.
Next morning, for want of a better plan, they resolved to look for Mysie in the thoroughfares, the father taking the New Town and the brother taking the Old Town. The unhappy old man spent most of the day in wandering up and down the streets, looking in vain amid the throng of strange and unsympathetic faces for those familiar kindly eyes that had been the light of his home. Jaded and perplexed, he had returned to his hotel in the early afternoon, when the landlord, whom he had taken into his confidence the night before, laid the advertisement sheet of a newspaper before him, and pointed to a paragraph headed "Found Drowned." He glanced rapidly over it, and to his horror saw that it was a description of his lost daughter. There could be no mistake. The age, the complexion, the features, the hair, all corresponded.
Like one stunned by a heavy blow on the head, the old man sat still for a moment. Then, driven by a feeling made up of hope and fear, he hurried to the police office in the High Street, all unconscious of the traffic that rumbled and buzzed around him. In a short time he found himself in the death-chamber, in presence of a prostrate and shrouded form, lying so terribly still and quiet; and in another second the facecloth was removed, and his worst fears were realised. Yes! in the stiff waxen mask he recognised that countenance which had so lately been the joy of everyone who looked upon it. He stood gazing at it like a man in a trance, till his pent-up feelings found vent in tears. Then it was that there occurred a most extraordinary circumstance—what would be deemed incredible, were it not vouched for by the chroniclers of the time. The door opened, and, in company with his son, there appeared the very woman whose fate he was bewailing and whose dead form he was gazing upon. She came forward, and her face took on a look of intense surprise at what she saw.