before
us."

Miss Dexter groaned aloud, and covered her eyes with her hand.

"Oh, my God! help me to shut out that horrible vision! If I could
forget that distorted, death-like face, with livid lips writhing away
from the gleaming teeth, and desperate, wide eyes, glaring like globes
of flame! She looked twenty years older, and from her clenched
hands,--her beautiful, exquisite hands,--that were wont to caress me
so tenderly, the blood was dripping down on her lace veil and her
white velvet bridal dress. How much she heard I know not, for I never
saw her again. I swooned in Maurice's arms, and was carried to my own
room; and when I finally groped my way to Evelyn's apartment, they
told me she had been gone two hours,--had sailed for Europe, leaving
her husband in New York. What passed in her farewell interview with
him none but he and her lawyer knew; but they separated there on
condition that his debts were cancelled. She went abroad with a
faithful old Scotch woman who had been her nurse, and her husband told
the world she was a maniac."

"Did he tell you so? Did you believe it?" exclaimed Dr. Grey, with a
degree of vehemence that startled the governess.

"I have never seen Maurice Carlyle since that awful hour in the
hot-house. He came repeatedly to my home, but I refused to meet him,
and dozens of his letters have been returned unopened. Once, while I
was absent, he obtained an interview with my mother, and besought her
intercession in his behalf, pleading for my pardon, and assuring her
that, as his wife was hopelessly insane, he would apply for a divorce,
and then claim the hand of the only woman he had ever loved. I dreaded
the effect upon Evelyn, and had no means of ascertaining her real
condition. Soon after, I lost my mother, whose death was hastened by
grief and humiliation; and, when I had laid her down beside my father,
I went in search of Evelyn. Several times I had attempted to
communicate with her, and with Elsie, the nurse, but my letters always
came back unopened, and bearing the London stamp. Having been informed
that she was in an insane asylum in England, I took the money that had
been so carefully hoarded for a different purpose and went to London.
One by one, I searched all the asylums in the United Kingdom, and
finding no trace of her, came back to America. Finally, on the
death-bed of Mr. Clayton, her lawyer, who understood my great anxiety
to discover her, I was told in strict confidence t