"P.S. I got my mother's letter to-day. Mother—I was not in my right senses, or I should not have done it. Mother, darling! forget me. Don't let me have broken your heart."
Alas, he had broken it!
"Never come home any more!— Never come home any more!"
She repeated this over and over again, vacantly: nothing but these five words.
Nature refused to bear it; or rather, Nature mercifully helped her to bear it. When John took his wife in his arms she was insensible; and remained so, with intervals, for hours.
This was the end of Edwin's wedding-day.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Lord Ravenel knew—as all Paris did by this time—the whole story. Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy. The lad was hurried off immediately, for fear of justice: but he had written from shipboard to Lord Ravenel, begging him himself to take the letter and break the news to us at Beechwood.
The man he had struck was not one of Lord Luxmore's set—though it was through some of his "noble" friends Guy had fallen into his company. He was an Englishman, lately succeeded to a baronetcy and estate; his name—how we started to hear it, though by Lord Ravenel and by us, for his sake, it was both pronounced and listened to, as if none of us had ever heard it before—Sir Gerard Vermilye.