Alden dropped the paper and exclaimed, "Oh, my poor wife! how I have wronged you! But who are the villains who have done this? I have been the victim of a wicked conspiracy. To-night I will leave for Cleverdale. I must go at once, for I have deeply wronged my wife. But perhaps she is dead! Oh no, she must be alive, and her father will not turn me off now."
Making immediate preparations to leave Chicago, he presented his kind friend with a generous sum of money, promising to write her on his arrival at Cleverdale. That night he was on a train bound for the East. He remembered how full of sorrow he was when he arrived in the city, eighteen months previous. Now he was returning to his home and kindred, unconscious of the events going forward at Cleverdale to rob him of his wife.
His first thought was to telegraph his friends, informing them of his coming, but he finally concluded to hasten on and verify his existence in the flesh by his own person and with his own lips.
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE WANDERER'S RETURN.
The day after his attempted suicide, Senator Hamblin, holding an interview with his daughter, again deceived her, saying that Mannis, fully cognizant of his financial embarrassment, offered to assist him when she became his wife. Belle exacted a promise from her father that he would inform Mannis of her marriage with George Alden, and that her heart could never be another's. If Mannis wished her to become his wife after knowing all, she would be ready to make the sacrifice to save her father.
For several days after this conversation, Belle, almost frantic with grief, remained in her own private apartment. Consenting to wed a man whom she believed indirectly responsible for her unhappiness, her condition became pitiable, and she moaned and sobbed continually.
"If I could only die and be laid beside my husband in yonder cemetery!" she said. "I fear I shall lose my reason, for this awful sacrifice I am about to make will break my heart. I cannot love another, much less this man who drove my poor sick husband into his grave. Is there no other way to avert the calamity awaiting Papa?"