on. But the man was in truth
a conscientious and useful railway pundit, with a large family,
and evident capabilities for his business. At last a verdict was
given,--that the man's name was Ferdinand Lopez, that he had been
crushed by an express train on the London and North Western Line, and
that there was no evidence to show how his presence on the line had
been occasioned. Of course Mr. Wharton had employed counsel, and of
course the counsel's object had been to avoid a verdict of felo de
se. Appended to the verdict was a recommendation from the jury that
the Railway Company should be advised to signalise their express
trains more clearly at the Tenway Junction Station.

When these tidings were told to the widow she had already given
way to many fears. Lopez had gone, purporting,--as he said,--to be
back to dinner. He had not come then, nor on the following morning;
nor had he written. Then she remembered all that he had done and
said;--how he had kissed her, and left a parting malediction for her
father. She did not at first imagine that he had destroyed himself,
but that he had gone away, intending to vanish as other men before
now have vanished. As she thought of this something almost like love
came back upon her heart. Of course he was bad. Even in her sorrow,
even when alarmed as to his fate, she could not deny that. But her
oath to him had not been to love him only while he was good. She had
made herself a part of him, and was she not bound to be true to him,
whether good or bad? She implored her father and she implored her
brother to be ceaseless in their endeavours to trace him,--sometimes
seeming almost to fear that in this respect she could not fully
trust them. Then she discerned from their manner a doubt as to her
husband's fate. "Oh, papa, if you think anything, tell me what you
think," she said late on the evening of the second day. He was then
nearly sure that the man who had been killed at Tenway was Ferdinand
Lopez;--but he was not quite sure, and he would not tell her. But on
the following morning, somewhat before noon, having himself gone out
early to Euston Square, he came back to his own house,--and then he
told her all. For the first hour she did not shed a tear or lose her
consciousness of the horror of the thing;--but sat still and silent,
gazing at nothing, casting back her mind over the history of her
life, and the misery which she had brought on all who belonged to
her. Then at last she ga