“Before this you may have received a letter I sent to your Cheltenham address, trusting it might reach you before you left. As, however, I have received no answer to it, I suppose it must have been too late. It will, therefore, probably be sent after you. It consisted merely of a few lines, begging you at once to send me the address of your friend, Miss Freer, to whom, on the chance of her being there, even had you left, I wrote at the same time. To that letter neither have I received any answer. Only to-day have I learned the reason—that she accompanied you to India last April. This news was a great shock to me. Still greater the information that accompanied it—that Miss Freer went out to India the betrothed wife of a gentleman to whom she was to be married very shortly after her arrival! The person who told me this, mentioned having heard it directly from yourself at Altes, some months ago. I may as well tell you that my informant was Sophy Berwick. She had no reason for telling me. She did incidentally. Nor can I see that it is likely she was mistaken. Certain words and allusions of Marion’s own confirm me in believing it. Still there is a chance—a mere chance—that it may not be so; and on this I now write to you, begging you as speedily as possible to tell me the truth. At the time Marion, under pressure of strong excitement, let fall the hints I refer to, she evidently did not consider herself irrevocably bound. She alluded to some concealment concerning herself, some obstacle connected with her father’s wishes. Had I only then dared to speak more openly of my own hopes and intentions all might have been well. But I thought it right not to do so; and since I have been free to speak, a series of cross-purposes, beginning with your sudden flight from Altes, and ending with my last letters missing you (previous ones having shared the same fate through an incorrect address), has, I fear, separated us—for ever. It is very terrible to me to realise that it probably is so. As to her, I must try to be unselfish enough to hope that all this may have fallen more lightly on her younger and more elastic nature. I do not know if you ever guessed this secret of mine? I almost wish now that I had confided it to you. The enclosed letter contains a full explanation of all in my conduct, that to my poor darling must have seemed mysterious and inexplicable. If, when you receive this, she be yet by any blessed chance free, give it to her. All then will, I feel assured, be well. If, on the other hand, as is more probable, she be already bound to another, even perhaps by this time married, return it to me as it is; and never, I beseech you, mention my name to her. Better far she should forget me, despise me even; than that, by learning that I, alas, have not ceased, never can cease to care for her, her married life with another should be embittered by vain regret. And in no case, mind you, do I blame her. I am ignorant of the circumstances which must have compelled her to agree to a marriage, into which she could not enter with her heart. Whatever they may have been, she, I am sure, is to be excused. Her youth and unselfishness of disposition would render her easy to persuade to such a sacrifice. I have said more than I intended. Selfishly too I have omitted to express my hopes that you found Colonel Archer in a fair way to complete recovery. I do not send any message to him, as I must beg you, on every account, to consider this letter and all it contains as strictly private. I shall be very grateful to you if you will answer this as soon as possible. Believe me,
“Yours faithfully,
“RALPH M. SEVERN.
“P.S. I am forgetting to mention that if the letter I sent to Cheltenham to Miss Freer, has, with yours, been forwarded to India, it is not either way of much consequence. Fearing it might not reach her directly, I purposely made it short and formal. Merely expressing my regret at not having seen her again, and asking for her address that I might send her some books, &c. This (and everything else) is fully explained in the enclosed.”
“The enclosed” was three times the length of the foregoing. It contained, as Ralph said, a full explanation of all that had occurred since the last evening at Altes, when they parted, as they thought, for the fortnight merely of Ralph’s visit to England.
Now began again for Ralph a period of weary waiting, till the answer, or answers, to his letters might be expected. It was a long time to wait—four months or thereabouts! He grew sick of the summer, the constant sunshine and brightness, and longed for the time when he should see the leaves beginning to turn, when among the trees he should perceive the first whisper of autumn. “For by then,” he thought, “this suspense at least will be over. And at the worst I shall be free to begin to live down my disappointment.”
So it came to pass that at the very same time both Marion and he were waiting with anxious hearts for news from the far-off East. Whereas, had they only known it, but a few days’ journey and a few words of explanation, would have sufficed again, and for life, to unite them.
What, for two or three weeks, Ralph thought was to be his only answer, came to him, as to Marion, in the advertisement sheet of the “Times;” where one morning early in October, he saw the announcement of poor Cissy’s death. It shocked him greatly.
For a week or two he knew not what to think or do. Then one morning, as he was all but losing hope of any further or more satisfactory reply, he received an Indian letter. A bulky letter with a deep black border round the envelope, and addressed in an unfamiliar hand. He turned it about, as people always do when particularly anxious to learn the contents of a letter, stared at the address, the stamps, and the black seal, as if they could reveal the secret of the inside!
At last he opened it, and drew out a second envelope likewise addressed to himself, but in a different hand, and with no black edge. This again he opened, and out fell, on to the floor at his feet, a letter that was no stranger to him. His own letter to Miss Freer, somewhat crushed and worn-looking from its much travelling, but otherwise exactly as it had left, him, the seal unbroken, the whole evidently untampered with. And his own words to Cissy recurred to him,—“If on the other hand she be already bound to another, even perhaps by this time married, return it to me as it is, and never, I beseech you, mention my name to her.