Eliot turned to him in unutterable dismay.
"Una!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, then paused, speechless. He saw a folded slip of paper in the banker's hand, and on his genial face disappointment and regret.
"Van Zandt, I am sorry for you, upon my word!" he said, feelingly. "I used all my eloquence, but I have failed. She gave me this note for you," he added, thrusting the slip of paper into Eliot's hand.
He took it in a dazed, lifeless way, opened it slowly, and read the words written in an elegant flowing hand, very different from the cramped, childish one in which Una had penned her farewell to him five years ago.
"Oh, forgive me," it ran, "but I can not see you now, or ever again in this world. What I wrote you when I left you five years ago remains unchanged. There is a barrier between us cruel as the grave. You must seek freedom from the nominal tie that binds you to me. Then you will forget me and find happiness with some woman more blessed by fate than I have been. For me, I shall convince you that our separation is irrevocable by returning at once to New Orleans, there to enter a convent and take the veil for life.
Una."
The cruel letter fell from his hand, and staggering heavily forward, Eliot dropped into a chair and bowed his face on the table.
"Van Zandt!" exclaimed the banker.
There was no reply.
Rushing to Eliot's side, he lifted his head from the table, and it fell again heavily. The young man's overwrought feelings had culminated in momentary unconsciousness.
A sharp peal of the bell brought the servants rushing to the scene, but not so soon but that Mr. Chesterton heard a gasp of terror from behind the curtains that divided the library from a pretty little parlor. Poor Una had crept in there for one stolen glimpse of the face of her beloved.