“Dear Rodney;” she wrote. “Myrtle Moore, your wife, is here, in this city. I came upon her in the park just as she was putting to her lips the deadly poison which was to kill her. I knocked the bottle from her hand. I took her to the House of the Good Shepherd. She is seriously ill there; dying. She cannot die without begging your forgiveness. Come on at once and give it to her. We shall all need mercy one day, as we have all done wrong. Come at once. Remember that Myrtle is still your wife. Think of her as she was when you first knew her; she is now a wreck, suffering, wretched, dying. Do not lose a day. You must see in this the Hand of God: that she had wandered here; that I came back here; that it was I who saved her from suicide to die with the sacraments, hope and sorrow in her miserable heart. If there is anything that I could add to urge you to come, I would add it, but what more is there? A woman whom you once loved, an outcast, broken-down, dying, begging your forgiveness! It is miserably sad, but still more pitiable; you are kind, Rodney; you will not say no. And God let me save her from a dreadful end, me, Cicely Adair.”
Cis read her letter several times, then she took it to Jeanette Lucas to read.
“I can’t tell whether it is right or wrong,” Cis said imploringly.
“I don’t think you could better it, dear. What can you do except lay before him the facts? He cannot refuse such a request as this, and from you! How strange it all is! Cis, when he comes—what?” Jeanette waited for Cis’s answer.
It came at last.
“Yes, what?” Cis echoed. “I don’t want to see him. Will you hide me, Jeanette?”
“But you know when this poor Myrtle is dead—” Jeanette stopped.
“No, no, no!” cried Cis. “What a curiously tangled web! I wonder why?”
“It is not tangled,” Jeanette reminded her. “It looks so to us; I’m sure the tangle is part of the pattern.”
Three days must pass before Rodney could reply to Cicely’s letter, and that would be making the best time possible for a letter to travel in each direction. It would be longer, if he were coming; time must be allowed, in either case, for Cicely’s letter to be forwarded to him. They were hard days to live through; dread, expectation, perhaps fear is not too strong a word, were in the air that Cis breathed; she spent the hours in feverish nervousness. And Myrtle was rapidly growing worse.