Two days after I had written to him I received a reply. He enclosed a cheque, told me what he was earning, and said that all should be mine if I would grant him a trifle to live upon in lodgings, because now that his children were gone and I refused to return to him his home was desolate, his life was made insupportable by the memories which arose as he sat alone of an evening. He would shut up the house, he said, and go into lodgings and there await me, for he had faith in my love and believed that I would return to him yet. He had much to tell me about Mary, repeated all that he had said in his conversation with me about his reasons for marrying her, said that he had made up his mind not to endeavour to discover her, because if he succeeded in finding her he was without any proposal to make. She was not his wife, he could not insult her by asking her to live with him, and she would not live with me if I rejoined him. Even if he could find her he would not propose, because he would not wish, that she and I should live together, for in that case it might come to his never seeing me nor his children again. Much more he said with which I will not weary you.
But his appeals left my resolution unaltered. Day followed day and I was for ever hoping to receive a letter from my sister, or to hear from my husband that he had learnt where she was in hiding. But the silence remained unbroken. What could I do? Even should I make appeals to her through the newspapers and she read them she was not likely to tell me where she lived and what she was doing. I could not myself seek for her. It was impossible to know, indeed, whether she had not left England. I ascertained from my husband that she had withdrawn her securities, so there was no clue to her whereabouts to be obtained from the bank where she had deposited the documents. Bitterest of all was this consideration—that even if I employed some shrewd person to seek after her and he should find her, there was no other proposal to make than that she should live with me; a proposal that I knew would be hopeless, because she would feel that whilst she lived with me I could not live with my husband, and her reason in disappearing was that she should be as dead to us voluntarily as I had been forced to be through calamity, that I might return to my home.
* * * * *
Six months passed. Occasionally I heard from my husband. He had locked up the house and gone into lodgings, and every letter contained an impassioned entreaty to me to return to him with the children.
One evening I was sitting with Mrs. Lee reading aloud to her. We had passed the afternoon in a long drive with the children; they were in bed sleeping soundly, and I had come down from seeing after them and was now sitting reading aloud to Mrs. Lee. It was the 21st of April, and, I believe, six months to the very day since the date of my husband’s visit to Jesmond.
I was reading aloud mechanically; my thoughts had all day been very much with my husband and my sister, and I felt dull in my heart, when we were startled by a loud postman’s knock on the hall door, and a minute later the housemaid entered with a letter. It was addressed to me, and it was in my husband’s handwriting, and I said to Mrs. Lee, ‘Here is a letter from John.’
But on opening the envelope I found that the enclosure consisted of a letter addressed to Mrs. John Campbell at my house in Bath. I turned it about before opening it. It was sealed with black wax, but the envelope was not black-edged, and the handwriting was entirely strange to me.
‘Can this be news of Mary?’ said I in a low voice, and looking at the post-mark I said, ‘it is from Manchester.’
‘Open it, my love, and read it,’ said Mrs. Lee; ‘there is no other way to put an end to your conjectures.’
The superscription of the letter was that of a vicarage taking its name from a very little town or village within an easy distance of Manchester. It was dated seven days earlier than this date of my receipt of it. I read it aloud: