"She has stepped out unperceived in the confusion of the leave-takings, and gone to her room," he decided, and a yearning impulse led him to seek her there.
He knocked at first softly on the door, and receiving no reply, entered quietly, feeling that she needed him in the distress she was enduring over madame's revelation.
But the room, like the conservatory, was deserted.
Over the dressing-table the gas was burning brightly. Eliot's eyes quickly detected an envelope lying just beneath the light that bore in large characters his own name.
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
He stood staring with frightened eyes at the white envelope, with its large black letters formed in Una's crude handwriting, dreading to touch it, for a swift instinct told him the truth.
She had left him, he felt quite sure—left him almost in the very hour when the discovery of their mutual love for each other had paved the way to their wedded happiness. Mme. Lorraine, like the serpent crawling into Eden, had brought woe and pain where love and joy had reigned.
All this flashed over him instinctively as he took the letter in his hand and tore it open, devouring in fierce haste the brief, sad note Una had written such a little while ago that the ink was scarcely dry upon the page.