CHAPTER XL[ToC]
PEACE, PEACE—AND THERE IS NO PEACE!
If I may dare to hope that there are, among my readers who have followed me with so much patience through this book, some sufficiently interested in the heroine to desire information on what befell her in her future lot, I should wish to give to them just a glimpse or two into scenes as totally different from the events recorded in this volume as night is from day. And to do this freely, unreservedly, I must endeavour to forget my close connection with the heroine, a connection the thought of which has hampered and restricted me, from first to last, in choosing and rewriting the material from her diary.
Her diary, as I have said before, had ended soon after her last adventure with the spies, never to be resumed again.
I do not, however, write from memory in this brief chapter on her subsequent experiences, for I have before me for reference a pile of letters from her to her mother.
Almost her last word when she left her native land was an injunction to her mother to preserve her letters for the future,—"for when I am married, mother dear, you will be my diary."
Not in a week or a month, not in any way perceptible to those around her, but stealthily, treacherously, and relentlessly the fine constitution was undermined, the highly strung nervous system was shattered. This had taken place chiefly during the desolate and dark hours of the night, when, helpless in the grip of the fiend Insomnia, the wretched girl abandoned herself to hopelessness and despair.