"And where is Mr. Marlboro'?"
"Where should you expect a man to be who crowds down the steam and sits on the valve,—who walks on crater-crust? Marlboro',—poor Marlboro'!—Marlboro' is dead."
Éloise dropped in a heap upon the floor.
The women gathered over her and got her away, laid at last upon her bed,—and then she ordered them all to leave her, which glad enough were they to do.
Mr. St. George walked the room in silence then, and finally sitting down and resting his elbows on the table, remained so a long time,—his knotted brow hidden by the tightly clasped hands. Nobody got any further information from him. They must wait till Evan Murray returned with the officers from the forts. Then he rose.
"You are in no danger here," he said to Mr. Murray. "There is a guard detailed for every adjacent plantation. The affair is altogether crushed.—I must go just the same," he muttered, and entered his cabinet alone.
It was about two hours afterward, that Éloise—with whom, after having roused herself from the horror of the shock, a feeling of unspeakable pity, awe, and quaking terror had merged in another of equally indescribable and cruel relief and freedom—was wakened from the dull dream that sogged upon her brain in answering the place of two nights' lost rest, by a servant at the door who brought to her a note. All confused at the instant of starting, suddenly memory struck out the late events in letters of fire. Half awake, with her pulse beating in great shocks all about her wherever a pulse could play, she tore the note open and read its but half-interpretable hieroglyphs twice before she comprehended it.
"Distasteful as the thought of me may be at such a time, you must endure it for a moment.
"I return to you to-day the property of which many months ago I despoiled you. I leave it in better condition than I found it, and so well has it met my demands, that, in spite of all expenditure, you will find the customary income for the length of time in the cabinet-escritoire untouched.
"I leave it because it becomes impossible for me to retain it. I leave it because it becomes impossible for me to live longer in the house with you, to breathe the air you breathe, to feel myself growing desperate beneath the sound of your voice. Because I cannot see you in sorrow for another. Because self-control can go no farther. I leave it, Éloise, because I love you!