nk of,--although less
horrible than had the wrong and misery taken place nearer home. But
after six years, and over a great ocean and the greater part of a
continent, how futile it seemed to stir up all those long-settled
sediments again! He wrote and rewrote a letter to a lawyer whose name
he remembered, to whom he had done one or two slight services, in the
distant State which was the scene of his brief and miserable story. But
he had not yet satisfied himself with this letter when there occurred an
interruption which put everything of the kind out of his thoughts.

This was the receipt of a communication in black borders so portentous
that Dick, always alive to the comic side of everything, was moved for
the moment to a profane laugh. "No mourning could ever be so deep as
this looks," he said to himself, and opened the gloomy missive with
little thought. It could, he believed, only convey to him information of
the death of some one whom he knew little, and for whom he cared less.
But the first glance effectually changed his aspect. His face grew
colourless, the paper fell out of his hands. "Good God!" he said. It was
no profane exclamation. What was this? a direct interposition of heaven
in his behalf, a miracle such as is supposed never to happen nowadays?
The first effect was to take breath and strength from him. He sat with
his under jaw fallen, his face livid as if with dismay. His heart seemed
to stand still; awe, as if an execution had been performed before his
eyes, came over him. He felt as if he had a hand in it, as if some
action of his had brought doom upon the sufferer. A cold perspiration
came out on his forehead. Had he wished her death in the midst of her
sins, poor, miserable woman? Had he set the powers of fate to work
against her, he, arrogant in his virtue and the happiness that lay
within his reach? Compunction was the first thought. It seemed to him
that he had done it. Had he a right to do it, to cut off her time of
repentance, to push her beyond the range of hope?

After this, however, he picked up the letter again with trembling hands,
and read it. It was from a man who described himself as the head of a
circus company in Liverpool, with whom Emma Altamont had been performing.
She had died in consequence of a fall two days before. "She directed me
with her last breath to write to you, to say that you would know her
under another name, which she was not going to soil by naming it even
on her d