"Oh, Paul! would Heaven it were impossible! or that I were dead."
"Miriam! where are those letters you wished to show me?"
"Oh! do not ask me, Paul! not yet! not yet! I dread to see them. And yet—who knows? they may relieve this dreadful suspicion! they may point to another probability," she said, incoherently.
"Just get me those letters, dear Miriam," he urged, gently.
She arose, tottering, and left the room, and after an absence of fifteen minutes returned with the packet in her hand.
"These seals have not been broken since my mother closed them," said
Miriam, as she proceeded to open the parcel.
The first she came to was the bit of a note, without date or signature, making the fatal appointment.
"This, Paul," she said, mournfully, "was found in the pocket of the dress Marian wore at Luckenough, but changed at home before she went out to walk the evening of her death. Mother always believed that she went out to meet the appointment made in that note."
Paul took the paper with eager curiosity to examine it. He looked at it, started slightly, turned pale, shuddered, passed his hand once or twice across his eyes, as if to clear his vision, looked again, and then his cheeks blanched, his lips gradually whitened and separated, his eyes started, and his whole countenance betrayed consternation and horror.
Miriam gazed upon him in a sort of hushed terror—then exclaimed: