She opened it with considerable curiosity, and yet with a feeling of foreboding at her heart.
The Cheshire Gazette, she read, as she espied the heading, and then her eye glanced down over the columns underneath.
Suddenly she started.
There is a paragraph marked.
Her eyes dilate—a look of horror comes into them; her lips grow pale, and she feels as if she is suffocating as she reads:
“MARRIED.—At the country residence of Lady Sherbrooke, on the 10th instant, Sir Archibald Sherbrooke and Lord Carrol, of Carrolton, to Miss Josephine Richards, of New York, U. S. A., and heiress presumptive to the Thornton estates in Devonshire, etc.”
Could it be true? The paper dropped from her nerveless hands. Was the deed really done at last, and Archibald Sherbrooke lost to her forever?
She had not realized until that moment how much of hope had lived in her heart during all this time.
But these dreadful words had suddenly cut it down, as the sharp sickle cuts down the tender grass.
Had she really read them, or had her imagination played her some terrible trick?