and
thence to Buffalo, she embraced the first opportunity to follow him to
the latter place. As I have told you, her ticket was bought for Buffalo,
and to Buffalo she evidently intended going. But chancing to leave the
cars at Syracuse, she was startled by encountering in the depot the very
man with whom she had been associating thoughts of guilt. Shocked and
thrown off her guard by the unexpectedness of the occurrence, she
betrays her shrinking and her horror. 'Were you coming to see me?' she
asks, and recoils, while he, conscious at the first glimpse of her face
that his guilt has cost him her love, starts back also, uttering, in his
shame and despair, words that were similar to hers, 'Were you coming to
see me?'"

"Convinced without further speech, that her worst fears had foundation
in fact, she turns back toward her home. The man she loved had committed
a crime. That it was partly for her sake only increased her horror
sevenfold. She felt as if she were guilty also, and, with sudden
remorse, remembered how, instead of curbing his wrath the day before she
had inflamed it by her words, if not given direction to it by her
violent gestures. That fact, and the self-blame it produced, probably is
the cause why her love did not vanish with her hopes. Though he was
stained by guilt, she felt that it was the guilt of a strong nature
driven from its bearings by the conjunction of two violent
passions,--ambition and love; and she being passionate and ambitious
herself, remained attached to the man while she recoiled from his crime.

"This being so, she could not, as a woman, wish him to suffer the
penalty of his wickedness. Though lost to her, he must not be lost to
the world. So, with the heroism natural to such a nature, she shut the
secret up in her own breast, and faced her friends with courage,
wishing, if not hoping, that the matter would remain the mystery it
promised to be when she stood with us in the presence of the dying
woman.

"But this was not to be, for suddenly, in the midst of her complacency,
fell the startling announcement that another man--an innocent man--one,
too, of her lover's own standing, if not hopes, had by a curious
conjunction of events so laid himself open to the suspicion of the
authorities as to be actually under arrest for this crime. 'Twas a
danger she had not foreseen, a result for which she was not prepared.

"Startled and confounded she let a few days go by in struggle and
indecisio