And with the returning daylight much of her remorse and all of her superstition vanished for the time being.
She thanked the ladies who had watched her during the night, and, in reply to their inquiries, assured them that she felt better, but begged them to keep her room dark.
They expressed their gratification to hear her say so. One of them bathed her face and hands and combed her hair, while the other one rang the bell, and ordered tea and toast to be brought to the room.
And they tenderly pressed her to eat and drink, and they waited on her while she partook slightly of this light breakfast.
Then they rang and sent the breakfast service away, and they put her room in order, and smoothed her pillows and the coverlet of her bed, and finally they kissed her and bade her good-morning for a while, promising to return again in the course of the afternoon, and begging that she would send for them, at the address they gave her, in case she should require their services sooner.
When she was left alone, Mary Grey slipped out of bed, locked the door after the ladies, and then, having secured herself from intrusion, she opened her traveling-bag and took from it a small white envelope, from which she drew a neatly-folded white paper.
This was the marriage certificate, setting forth that on the fifteenth day of September, eighteen hundred and ——, at the parish church of St. ——, in the city of Philadelphia, Alden Lytton, attorney at law, of the city of Richmond, and Mary Grey, widow, of the same city, were united in the holy bonds of matrimony by the Rev. Mr. Borden, rector of the church, in the presence of John Martin, sexton, and Sarah Martin, his daughter.
The certificate was duly signed by the Rev. Mr. Borden and by John Martin and Sarah Martin.
Mary Grey sat down with this document before her, read it over slowly, and laughed a demoniac laugh as she folded it up and put it carefully into its envelope and returned it to her traveling-bag, while she reviewed her plot and "summed up the evidence" she had accumulated against the peace and honor of Alden Lytton and Emma Cavendish.
"Yes, I will let him marry her," she said, "and then, in the midst of their fancied security and happiness, I will come down upon them like an avalanche of destruction. I will claim him for my own husband by a previous marriage. I have evidence enough to convict and ruin him.