"You have received some truth, Miriam. How it has been presented to you, I will not ask now. I may presently. I was married, as you have somehow ascertained, to Marian Mayfield, just before going to Europe. I corresponded with her from Glasgow. I did appoint a meeting with her on the beach, upon the fatal evening in question—for what purpose that meeting was appointed, it is bootless to tell you, since the meeting never took place—for some hours before I should have set out to keep my appointment, my grandfather was stricken with apoplexy. I did not wish to leave his bedside until the arrival of the doctor. But when the evening wore on, and the storm approached, I grew uneasy upon Marian's account, and sent Melchisedek in the gig to fetch her from the beach to this house—never to leave it. Miriam, the boy reached the sands only to find her dying. Terrified half out of his senses, he hurried back and told me this story. I forgot my dying relative—forgot everything, but that my wife lay wounded and exposed on the beach. I sprung upon horseback, and galloped with all possible haste to the spot. By the time I had got there the storm had reached its height, and the beach was completely covered with the boiling waves. My Marian had been carried away. I spent the wretched night in wandering up and down the bluff above the beach, and calling on her name. In the morning I returned home to find my grandfather dead, and the family and physicians wondering at my strange absence at such a time. That, Miriam, is the story."
Miriam made no comment whatever. Mr. Willcoxen seemed surprised and grieved at her silence.
"What have you now to say, Miriam?"
"Nothing."
"'Nothing?' What do you think of my explanation?"
"I think nothing. My mind is in an agony of doubt and conjecture. I must be governed by stern facts—not by my own prepossessions. I must act upon the evidences in my possession—not upon your explanation of them," said Miriam, distractedly, as she arose to leave the room.
"And you will denounce me, Miriam?"
"It is my insupportable duty! it is my fate! my doom! for it will kill me!"
"Yet you will do it!"
"I will."