"What under the heavens took that man out there? Had he gone suddenly mad? That seems to be the only possible explanation of his conduct. To abandon his bride on the day of his marriage—to abandon his high official position as governor of this State on the day of his inauguration, and without giving any living creature a hint of his intention, to fly off at a tangent and go to the Indian country and become a missionary to those red devils, and be massacred for his pains—it was the work of a raving maniac. But what drove him mad? Surely it was not his high elevation that turned his head, for if it had been, his madness would never have taken this particular direction of flying from his honors. No! it is as I have always suspected. He heard, in some way, of the girl's English lover, and he, with his besotted devotion to her, was just the man to be morbidly, madly jealous, and to do some such idiotic thing as he has done, and get himself murdered and burned to ashes for his pains! Yes; and it serves him right!—it serves him—right!"
He sat glowering at the paragraph, and growling over his news for some time longer, but at length he took it up and walked over to the back parlor, where he felt sure he should find his two women.
Mrs. Rockharrt and Cora, who sat at a table before the gloomy coal fire, and were engaged in some fancy needlework, looked up uneasily as he entered; not that they expected bad news, but that they feared bad temper.
"Cora," he began, "I shall not insist on your going to the ball to-morrow."
She looked up in surprise, and a grateful exclamation was on her lips, but he forestalled it by saying:
"I suppose the news is all over the city by this time. I am going out to hear what the people are saying about it, and to see if the government house and the public offices are to be hung in mourning. There—there it is told in the first column of this paper."
And with cruel abruptness he laid the newspaper on the table between the two women, and pointed out the fatal paragraph.
Then he stalked out of the room, and called his man-servant to help him on with his heavy overcoat.
That house, on the previous night, had been one blaze of light in honor of the State dinner. Now, as well as he could see dimly through the falling snow, it was all closed up, and men on ladders were festooning every row of windows with black goods.
"Yes, of course. It is as I expected. The news has gone all over the town already," said old Aaron Rockharrt, as he strode through the snowstorm to the business center of the city.