"So it is over," she said. "It is over, and it has been over for five days. They are in the midst of their happiness, enjoyed at the expense of my misery. Theirs is a fool's paradise from which I could eject them at any moment; but I will not—not just yet. The longer I suspend the blow the heavier it will fall at last. They will carry out their programme, I presume; so far, at least, as to go upon their bridal trip to Europe. I could stop them on the eve of their voyage; but I will not. I will let them go and return, and hold their wedding-reception, and then, in the midst of their joy and triumph, in the presence of their admiring friends—"
She paused to gloat with demoniac enjoyment over the picture her wicked imagination had conjured up.
—"Then I will turn all their joy to despair, all their triumph to humiliation, all their glory to shame! And I will do all this alone—alone, or use others only as my blind tools.
"Of course they will take this city on their way to New York to embark for Europe. And they will call on me to show me their happiness, and take a keener relish of it from seeing the contrast of my misery. But they shall be disappointed in that, at least. I will not be dragged at the wheels of their triumphal car. I will not stay here to receive them. I will leave town, and stay out of it until I am sure that they have passed through and left it."
She kept her word.
She went down to Forestville, ostensibly to relieve a poor family suffering under an accumulation of afflictions, but really to be out of the way of the bridal pair, and to get up evidence in the case she intended to bring against the husband of Emma Cavendish.
When she had been but a few days at Forestville she received a letter from Miss Romania Crane—who in her absence kept up a sentimental correspondence with her—informing her of the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Alden Lytton, the bride and bridegroom from Blue Cliffs, who stopped for a day in the city on their way to New York.
Immediately on her receipt of this letter she returned to Richmond and to the house of the Misses Crane.
And she very much surprised and shocked these ladies by assuming an air of grief and distraction as extreme in itself as it was unaccountable to them.
They could not even imagine what was the matter with her. She refused to give any explanation of her apparent mental anguish, and she repelled all sympathy.