. I was not
told the day or hour of her departure. Happily, perhaps, for us both, for
I could never have kept away from the station. I should have risked
everything for one glimpse of her face, if only to satisfy my own
judgment as to whether she would ever recognise me again, or remember
what had occurred on that doleful night when the light of her intellect
set in the darkness of sin and trouble.

The police had the same idea, I think, for I heard later that she was
deliberately driven past The Whispering Pines, though the other road was
more direct and less free, if anything, from possible spectators. They
thought, no doubt, that a sight of the place might reawaken whatever
memories remained of the last desperate scene preceding her brother and
sister's departure for this out-of-the-way spot. They little knew how
cruel was the test, or what a storm of realisation might have overwhelmed
her mind as her eye fell on those accursed walls, peering from their
bower of snow-laden, pines. But I did, and I never rested till I learned
how she had borne herself in her slow drive by the two guarded gateways:
merrily, it seems, and with no sign of the remembrances I feared. The
test, if it were meant for such, availed them nothing; no more, indeed,
than an encounter with her on the road, or at the station would have
availed me. For the veil she begged for had shrouded her features
completely, and it was only from her manner that those who accompanied
her, perceived her light-heartedness and delight in this change.

One sentence, and one only, reached my ears of all she said before she
disappeared from town.

"If Adelaide were only going, too! But I suppose I shall meet her and
Mr. Ranelagh somewhere before my return. She must be very happy. But not
so peaceful as I am. She will see that when we meet. I can hardly wait
for the day."

Words which set me thinking; but which I was bound to acknowledge could
be only the idle maunderings of a diseased mind from which all
impressions had fled, save those of innocence and futile hope.

One incident more before I enter upon the serious business of the trial.
I had no purpose in what I did. I merely followed the impulse of the
moment, as I had so often done before in my selfish and thoughtless life,
when I started one night for my walk at ten o'clock instead of twelve. I
went the old way; and the old longing recurring at the one charmed spot
on the road, I cast a quick look at the tow