“Haverleigh might have taunted the woman with the fact that she had had something to do with the deception practiced upon Agatha, but she did not give him a chance, for she went on to accuse herself:

“‘For this deed of blackness, I, too, was to blame, but I never dreamed it was my darling, for whom I would have died; never guessed it was she of whom I was so madly jealous, those days and nights when you left me so much, and I knew a younger, fairer face than mine attracted you. I was not fair then, for I knew of Agatha’s flight, and was hunting for her everywhere, and all the time you had her in Paris, and I working against her. Oh, Agatha, Agatha, sister, I’d give my life to have you back, but you are gone, and on that little grave in southern France I swore you should be avenged; and so——’ turning now to Haverleigh who sat with his face buried in his hands—‘and so I learned the story of the little American, and wrote to her friends, for I knew the mother was not dead, as you told her, Heaven only knows why! I wrote, I say, and the boy Fred started himself for France. Do you remember my telling you I had advertised for an English maid, and do you remember the Fanny Shader of whom I thought so much? That was Frederick Strong, in girl’s attire.’

“Haverleigh lifted his head then and ejaculated, ‘the devil,’ then dropped it again, and Eugenie went on. ‘You begin, no doubt, to see the plot. I took Fanny to Chateau d’Or, and left her there, and planned the visit to Paris, and all that happened next. I telegraphed to madame just as I agreed. I met her at Avignon; I accompanied her to Havre; I engaged her passage, and I paid the bills for her and Fred, not for Madame Verwest. She paid her own. She was an unexpected character in the little drama. That she has gone to America, I know. Why she went I do not know. Now I have told you all, and Agatha is avenged.’

“He neither looked up, nor moved, nor spoke as she swept from the room. Indeed, although he heard the trail of her heavy silk as she went past him, he hardly knew she had gone, so completely confounded and stupefied was he with what she had said to him. That she, for whom he had done so much, and on whose fidelity he had so implicitly trusted, should turn against him, hurt him cruelly, that she should be the sister of Agatha confounded and bewildered him; and that Anna had fled with his boy to America, where his villainy, and treachery, and deceit would be fully exposed, and that Madame Verwest had gone with her and thus virtually turned against him, maddened and enraged him, and took from him for a time the power even to move, and he sat perfectly quiet for at least fifteen minutes after Eugenie had left him. Then, with an oath and a clenching of his fists at something invisible, he sprang up, exclaiming, ‘I’ll follow them to America and claim my own. The law will give me my wife, or at least my child, and that will stab them deeply.’

“Excited and buoyed up with this new idea, he felt himself growing strong again to act, and without seeking to see Eugenie, he left the house, and the next steamer which left Havre for America carried him as a passenger.

CHAPTER XIII.
IN AMERICA

“The ship l’Europe came slowly up New York harbor one pleasant summer morning, and among the eager crowd gathered on its deck, none were more eager and expectant, ay, and nervous too, than our friends Madame Verwest and Anna. The latter had been sick all the voyage, and kept her state-room, tormented with a thousand groundless fears as to what her infuriated husband might do. He was capable of anything, she knew, and felt that he would follow her to America, and try to get her again in his power. It was Fred who thoughtlessly suggested that he might telegraph to New York for officers to be ready to arrest his runaway wife as a lunatic, and after that idea once lodged in her brain, Anna never rested a moment, night or day; and when at last New York was in sight, and she was forced to dress herself and go on deck, she looked more like a ghost than the blooming girl who had sailed down that very harbor not quite two years before. Madame Verwest had been very silent during the entire voyage, and had never given the slightest reason why she had left the chateau. Nor did Anna care to question her. She was satisfied to have her with her and clung to her as to a mother.

“‘Do you think he has telegraphed, and what shall we do if he has? You will never let them have me,’ she said, as the ship was nearing the wharf, and she gazed in terror at the promiscuous crowd waiting there, and mistaking the custom-house officers for the police come to arrest.

“Madame Verwest herself had thought it possible that Haverleigh might telegraph, but she did not admit it. She only said: