"Let him come up," I answered, and Wareham retired.
I stood before the mirror as the young lord entered, and as I turned, I saw the face of my betrothed husband, Ernest Walworth.
Upon the horror of that moment I need not dwell.
He fell insensible to the floor, and was carried from the room and the house to the carriage by Wareham, who had led him to the place.
I have never seen the face of Ernest since that hour.
I received one letter from him—one only—in which he set forth the circumstances which induced him to visit my house, and in which he bade me "farewell."
He is now in a foreign land. The bones of his father rest in the village church-yard. The cottage home is desolate.
Wareham died suddenly about a year after our "marriage." The doctors said that his death was caused by an overdose of Morphine administered by himself in mistake. He died in our house, and as mother and myself stood over his coffin in the darkened room, the day before the funeral, I noticed that she regarded first myself and then the face of the dead profligate with a look full of meaning.
"Don't you think, dear mother," I whispered, "that the death of this good man was very singular?"
She made no reply, but still her face wore that meaning look.