ays, but she had other causes for worry, and I have been willing enough
to think that these were the occasion of her restless ways and short,
sharp speech and the blankness with which she met all my attempts to
soothe and encourage her. This evening"--I choked at the word. The day
had been one string of extraordinary experiences, accumulating in
intensity to the one ghastly discovery which had overtopped and
overwhelmed all the rest. "This evening," I falteringly continued, "I had
set as the limit to my endurance of the intolerable situation. During a
minute of solitude preceding the dinner at Miss Cumberland's house on the
Hill, I wrote a few lines to her sister, urging her to trust me with her
fate and meet me at the station in time for the ten-thirty train. I meant
to carry her at once to P----, where I had a friend in the ministry who
would at once unite us in marriage. I was very peremptory, for my nerves
were giving way under the secret strain to which they had been subjected
for so long, and she herself was looking worn with her own silent and
uncommunicated conflict.

"To write this note was easy, but to deliver it involved difficulties.
Miss Cumberland's eyes seemed to be more upon me than usual. Mine were
obliged to respond and Carmel seeing this, kept hers on her plate or on
the one other person seated at the table, her brother Arthur. But the
opportunity came as we all rose and passed together into the
drawing-room. Carmel fell into place at my side and I slipped the note
into her hand. She had not expected it and I fear that the action was
observed, for when I took my leave of Miss Cumberland shortly after, I
was struck by her expression. I had never seen such a look on her face
before, nor can I conceive of one presenting a more extraordinary
contrast to the few and commonplace words with which she bade me good
evening. I could not forget that look. I continued to see those pinched
features and burning eyes all the way home where I went to get my
grip-sack, and I saw them all the way to the station, though my thoughts
were with her sister and the joys I had planned for myself. Man's
egotism, Dr. Perry. I neither knew Adelaide nor did I know the girl whose
love I had so over-estimated. She failed me, Dr. Perry. I was met at the
station not by herself, but by a letter--a few hurried lines given me by
an unknown man--in which she stated that I had asked too much of her,
that she could not so wrong her sister w