She put the letter in an envelope, addressed it to Alfred at the "Strand Hotel," Kilcash, rang the bell, and sent a servant off with it.
When it was gone she said:
"I must go now and meet Tom. He said he'd be---- Where's this he said he'd be? Oh, I know! By the corner of the wood on the Bandon Road. I'll put on the white muslin Tom likes. If Mr. Paulton should come they must say I am out."
Alfred Paulton got the note, and although he could not understand the signature--it was no doubt the result of a lapse of memory, in which she went back for a moment to her girlish days--he knew his dismissal was final.
That day he set off for London, and arrived in time to see Madge married to his old friend, Jerry O'Brien, who was secretly delighted at the failure of Alfred's suit.
While Jerry was on his honeymoon he got a letter from his old friend and solicitor, the postscript of which gave him the latest news of Mrs. Davenport: the doctors had pronounced her hopelessly insane.