wished to show me?"

"Oh! do not ask me, Paul! not yet! not yet! I dread to see them. And
yet--who knows? they may relieve this dreadful suspicion! they may point
to another probability," she said, incoherently.

"Just get me those letters, dear Miriam," he urged, gently.

She arose, tottering, and left the room, and after an absence of fifteen
minutes returned with the packet in her hand.

"These seals have not been broken since my mother closed them," said
Miriam, as she proceeded to open the parcel.

The first she came to was the bit of a note, without date or signature,
making the fatal appointment.

"This, Paul," she said, mournfully, "was found in the pocket of the
dress Marian wore at Luckenough, but changed at home before she went out
to walk the evening of her death. Mother always believed that she went
out to meet the appointment made in that note."

Paul took the paper with eager curiosity to examine it. He looked at
it, started slightly, turned pale, shuddered, passed his hand once or
twice across his eyes, as if to clear his vision, looked again, and then
his cheeks blanched, his lips gradually whitened and separated, his eyes
started, and his whole countenance betrayed consternation and horror.

Miriam gazed upon him in a sort of hushed terror--then exclaimed:

"Paul! Paul! what is the matter? You look as if you had been turned to
stone by gazing on the Gorgon's head; Paul! Paul!"

"Miriam, did your mother know this handwriting?" he asked, in a husky,
almost inaudible voice.

"No!"

"Did she suspect it?"

"No!"

"Did you know or suspect it?"

"No! I was a child when I received it, remember. I have never seen it
since."

"Not when you put it in my hand, just now?"

"No, I never looked at the writing?"

"That was most strange that you should not have glanced at the
handwriting when you handed it to me. Why didn't you? Were you afraid to
look at it? Miram! why do you turn away your head? Miriam! answer me--do
you know the handwriting?"

"No, Paul, I do not know it--do you?"

"No! no! how should I? But Miriam, your head is still averted. Your very
voice is changed. Miriam! what mean you? Tell me once for all. Do you
suspect the handwriting?"

"How should I? Do you, Paul?"

"No! no! I don't suspect it."

They seemed afraid to look each other in the face; and well they might
be, for the written agony on either brow; they seemed afraid to hear the
sound of each other's words; and w