Feeling as if she were turning to stone, she picked up the paper and compelled herself to go over the horrible sentence again.
Yes, it was all true—it was as plain as print could make it. But what was this?
A new terror seized her—something that she had not thought of until now, she had been so stunned by the bare fact that her lover was married.
“Sir Archibald Sherbrooke and Lord Carrol, of Carrolton!”
A mist comes over her eyes; her heart drops like a thing of lead in her bosom.
In an instant a suspicion of the truth flashed upon her.
Had she done her lover an irreparable wrong? she asked herself, with a feeling of despair. Had she driven him from her, taunting him with treachery and cowardice, and refusing to listen to his defense, when perhaps he had the best in the world to offer her?
Oh! if she had but heeded Mr. Rosevelt when he begged her to let him see him and learn the reason of his mysterious conduct. Oh! if she had only answered that advertisement and allowed him to come to her as he had entreated.
She had been cruel, unjust, wicked; and now it was too late to atone for it.
She felt as if bands of ice were being bound about her heart—as if coals of fire were heaped upon her brain, and branded upon it, in letters which would haunt her till her dying hour, those two names, Sir Archibald Sherbrooke and Lord Carrol, of Carrolton.