With all the color stricken out of her face—dumb, still, white, tearless, and rigid, she had been standing in her awful despair. But at these last words she came back suddenly as it were from the dead.
"He said that?" she asked hoarsely. "He told you to take me back there—like this?"
"He did."
"My curse upon him—my curse follow him through life!"
The man before her actually recoiled. She had uplifted one arm, and in the gathering darkness of the night, she stood before him white and terrible. So, for a second—then she came back to herself, and tore open the note. Only half a dozen brief lines—the tragedies of life are ever quickly written.
"Believe all that Liston tells you. I have been the greatest scoundrel on earth to you, my poor Norine. I don't ask you to forgive me—that would not be human, I only ask you to go and—if you can—forget."
"L. T."
No more. She looked up—out over the creeping night, on the sea, over the lonely, white sands, and stood fixed and mute. The letter she had looked for, longed for, prayed for, she had got at last!
In the dead stillness that followed, Mr. Liston felt more uncomfortable, perhaps, then he had ever felt before in the whole course of his life. In sheer desperation he broke it.
"You are not angry with me, I hope, Mrs. Laurence; I am but his uncle's servant—when I am ordered I must obey. He was afraid to write all this; it would be a very damaging confession to put on paper, so he sent me. You are not angry with me?"