"Married:—On the 28th instant, in the Heath Chapel, Sir William Heath, of Heathdale, to Miss Margaret Stanhope, only daughter of the late Sidney Stanhope."
Thus was added the last drop to the cup of bitterness which Virgie had to drink.
There had been a strange mixture of truth and falsehood in the letter which Lady Linton wrote to Mrs. Farnum.
Her brother was away for a day or two on a matter of business when Virgie's imploring epistle arrived—a circumstance for which his sister was most thankful, for it was no trifling matter for her to be always on the alert to intercept the letters that passed, through the bag at Heathdale. But she had succeeded in accomplishing this by having had an extra key made for the lock and always accompanying the carriage when it went for the mail.
This drive she called her "constitutional," and as the carriage was a closed one, she could readily unlock the bag and abstract the letters she wanted without being seen, and consequently was never suspected of having anything to do with the interrupted correspondence of Sir William and Virgie.
She had also been interrupted while writing to Mrs. Farnum by the return of her brother and the entrance of her cousin's new wife. Afterward she had had a talk with Sir William, in which he confessed to feeling greatly "troubled" regarding Virgie and her long, unaccountable silence. He said he felt that he had "done wrong" to have left her so long, for, as it had proved, his mother was gradually though slowly improving, and he might have gone and returned without affecting her health; he should see Sir Herbert Randal when he came again, and make arrangements to sail immediately for America. But Lady Linton cunningly provided against this calamity by privately informing the physician that her mother was worrying over this threatened departure, and he succeeded in prevailing upon the baronet to wait a week or two longer.
Sir William had, indeed, given his sister a hundred-pound note, but it was for the benefit of a poor girl who had been crippled by a railway accident; and thus all these circumstances being artfully woven into her letter had something of truth in them, and helped to serve the scheming woman's purpose.
Chapter XVIII.
"I Will Prove It."
It was very fortunate for Virgie that she had a little one at this time, else she would have deemed life scarcely worth the living, so stunned and crushed was she by the terrible blow that had fallen upon her.
For two long hours, after reading that letter from Lady Linton, and the paper containing that paragraph of William Heath's marriage, she lay as if paralyzed upon her bed. One would hardly believe that she lived at all, but for that look of unutterable woe in her eyes and the expression of agony about her mouth.