She rushed down to meet him, and snatched the letter.
“From Richmond, madam,” he said; “which I hope master is well, and is coming home.”
“Yes, from Richmond,” she said, tearing the envelope open, and beginning to run her eyes over it, as she went back to her room and sank into her resting chair. For the poor young wife and expectant mother could not now rush about and excite herself with impunity.
She sank, faint, dizzy and breathless, into her chair, and tried to read her letter; but the words ran together, and the lines reeled before her eyes; and some minutes passed before she was sufficiently recovered and calmed to do so. And as she gathered the meaning of this most cruel of all his heartless letters, her pale face grew paler still, her breath came in short gasps, and her frame shook as with an ague fit.
Before she had quite finished reading it, she let it drop from her hands, threw up her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, fell forward to the floor.
And well she might.
This murderous letter Alexander had sent to his wronged wife as a coup de grace.
In it he told her that humanity had induced him to prepare her, by a long abstinence from her society, for the painful communication he was about to make. He dared to hope that by this time she must have seen that there was something wrong in their union, and some good cause other than he had before stated for his keeping away from her. He said that now he believed she was ready to learn, without a great shock, which he had studied to spare her, the true cause of his parting from her. He then went on to tell her that early in the month of March he had discovered, to his own great astonishment, that their union was utterly null, void, and illegal; that he could not find it in his heart at that time to shock her with the fatal news; but he made up his mind to prepare her for it by degrees, and finally to break it to her very slowly. He begged to remind her that since the day upon which he had made the discovery of the unlawfulness of their connection he had never wronged her by intruding into her private apartments, or treating her otherwise than with the reserve due to a lady and the affection owed to a sister. He repeated that he had tried to spare her pain in the breaking of this tie, the severance of which was as distressing to him as it could possibly be to her. He assured her that, though duty forbade him ever to see her face again, he should provide for her future welfare, by securing to her the little estate upon which she lived. He concluded by telling her, that as propriety required all possible intercourse, even by writing, to cease between them, and as he himself was about to leave town for the country, it would be useless for her to reply to his letter.
It is to be noted that in this cruel communication he took care to say no more than was absolutely necessary to quell and quiet her claims on him. He did not even call her by name, but addressed her as “my poor little friend.” He did not acknowledge the receipt of any of her letters. And, worse than all, he failed to specify the cause of the alleged illegality of their marriage—whether it had chanced in any informality of the ceremony, which might be remedied by a second and more careful solemnization of the rites; or whether it existed in the shape of some insurmountable impediment that must forbid their union. Nor did he venture to allude to his former betrothal and his approaching wedding with his cousin Anna. Indeed, all proper names of persons and places seemed studiously left out. The writing also, was in a disguised hand, and without date or signature.
Altogether it was a careful work of a cautious man, who would have been an astute villain and a successful schemer if he had not, in the blindness of his selfishness, overreached even himself.