When he has read it all, his first thought is, “What a very unpleasant state of affairs.”
He cannot show the letter to his future wife or her people. He cannot give a hint that Gabrielle may have committed the atrocious folly of putting an end to herself. True, the uncertainty of her fate does not conduce to his comfort or his equanimity of mind, but it is not to be thought of that he should cut his own throat by showing her letter.
“Here goes!” he says, at last, with a sigh of relief, as the torn fragments of Gabrielle’s last words scatter to the four winds, and he turns with a tender smile to meet his betrothed, who comes slowly and sadly, as it seems to him, up the garden walk.
“I thought you were never coming, darling,” he whispers in his softest voice, while his ultramarine eyes look into her own longingly, yearningly.
But Zai’s grey eyes do not respond, and her face is very grave as she falters:
“Gabrielle! oh, how shall I tell you Gabrielle——?”
“Yes,” he questions feverishly, staring at her in his bewilderment.
“Poor Gabrielle is dead!”
“Dead?”
“Yes! We thought she had gone to Southampton, but she hasn’t—for—oh! what could have made her do it?” she cries, looking up with piteous eyes into his white face. “She has drowned herself in the river! What could have made her do such a terrible thing?”