verywhere. You
shall know how it goes on. Oh, I am so happy!"

She burst into tears, and signed to Amelius with a wild gesture of
treaty to leave her.

He pressed her hand in silence, and went out.

Almost as the door closed on him, the variable woman changed again. For
a while she walked rapidly to and fro, talking to herself. The course of
her tears ceased. Her lips closed firmly; her eyes assumed an expression
of savage resolve. She sat down at the table and opened her desk. "I'll
read it once more," she said to herself, "before I seal it up."

She took from her desk a letter of her own writing, and spread it out
before her. With her elbows on the table, and her hands clasped fiercely
in her hair, she read these lines addressed to her husband:--

JOHN FARNABY,--I have always suspected that you had something to do
with the disappearance of our child. I know for certain now that you
deliberately cast your infant daughter on the mercy of the world, and
condemned your wife to a life of wretchedness.

"Don't suppose that I have been deceived! I have spoken with the woman
who waited by the garden-paling at Ramsgate, and who took the child from
your hands. She saw you with me at the lecture; and she is absolutely
sure that you are the man.

"Thanks to the meeting at the lecture-hall, I am at last on the trace of
my lost daughter. This morning I heard the woman's story. She kept the
child, on the chance of its being reclaimed, until she could afford to
keep it no longer. She met with a person who was willing to adopt it,
and who took it away with her to a foreign country, not mentioned to me
yet. In that country my daughter is still living, and will be restored
to me on conditions which will be communicated in a few days' time.

"Some of this story may be true, and some of it may be false; the woman
may be lying to serve her own interests with me. Of one thing I am
sure--my girl is identified, by means known to me of which there can
be no doubt. And she must be still living, because the interest of the
persons treating with me is an interest in her life.

"When you receive this letter, on your return from business to-night,
I shall have left you, and left you for ever. The bare thought of even
looking at you again fills me with horror. I have my own income, and
I mean to take my own way. In your best interests I warn you, make
no attempt to trace me. I declare solemnly that, rather than let your
deserted daughter