inions you
may value. I have only to sign my dishonored name, and every one
will understand and applaud my motive for writing as I do. The name
justifies--amply justifies--the letter. Forgive and forget me. Farewell.

"EUSTACE MACALLAN."

In those words he took his leave of me. We had then been married--six
days.

CHAPTER XIV. THE WOMAN'S ANSWER.

THUS far I have written of myself with perfect frankness, and, I think I
may fairly add, with some courage as well. My frankness fails me and my
courage fails me when I look back to my husband's farewell letter, and
try to recall the storm of contending passions that it roused in my
mind. No! I cannot tell the truth about myself--I dare not tell the
truth about myself--at that terrible time. Men! consult your observation
of women, and imagine what I felt; women! look into your own hearts, and
see what I felt, for yourselves.

What I _did,_ when my mind was quiet again, is an easier matter to deal
with. I answered my husband's letter. My reply to him shall appear in
these pages. It will show, in some degree, what effect (of the lasting
sort) his desertion of me produced on my mind. It will also reveal the
motives that sustained me, the hopes that animated me, in the new and
strange life which my next chapters must describe.

I was removed from the hotel in the care of my fatherly old friend,
Benjamin. A bedroom was prepared for me in his little villa. There I
passed the first night of my separation from my husband. Toward the
morning my weary brain got some rest--I slept.

At breakfast-time Major Fitz-David called to inquire about me. He had
kindly volunteered to go and speak for me to my husband's lawyers on the
preceding day. They had admitted that they knew where Eustace had gone,
but they declared at the same time that they were positively forbidden
to communicate his address to any one. In other respects their
"instructions" in relation to the wife of their client were (as they
were pleased to express it) "generous to a fault." I had only to write
to them, and they would furnish me with a copy by return of post.

This was the Major's news. He refrained, with the tact that
distinguished him, from putting any questions to me beyond questions
relating to the state of my health. These answered, he took his leave of
me for that day. He and Benjamin had a long talk together afterward in
the garden of the villa.

I retired to my room