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"A friend to you and to yours believes it a genuine kindness to inform you that the identity of 'Ely Twiggs' has been discovered, and hopes an early knowledge of this fact may be useful to you."

She replaced the note beneath the pillow, returned to the library, and rolled back the chiffonier. After all, she had ended her quest in a cul-de-sac. Turning the gas jets low, she sat watching the blue flicker that danced like witch-lights in the grate, and once she smiled at her own discomfiture, realizing that her attempt was futile as would be the trial of a Yale key to open a "combination" vault lock, the arrangement of which was unknown. Keenly alert, she heard the rattle of the night-latch, the closing of the front door, and, after a moment, Judge Kent came slowly into the room. At first he did not notice her presence, and in this brief unguarded interval she saw the countenance without its habitual mask – a face gloomy, perturbed, unnaturally flushed, with restless eyes gleaming like those of a jaded, hunted forest animal.

"Ah – Mrs. Mitchell! Sitting up for Eglah? Didn't she tell you she was going from the dinner to the cotillon? Herriott will see her home. It is a shame to have kept you up, but girls are so thoughtless."

"Eglah is never that, and I knew she would be late at the cotillon. I waited downstairs solely to see you."

"Very kind, I am sure; but I feel much better, thank you. Indeed, I may say I have fully recovered from that sudden, intolerable spell of nausea. You are very good to worry over that little attack, but pray think no more about it. I shall abjure Welsh rarebit and oysters in future. At my time of life, pneumogastric nerves get their innings."

Brightening the light in the gas globe over the mantel, she approached and confronted him.

"Judge Kent, I am not 'worrying' over the condition of your digestive organs, but I do feel deeply interested in the nature of the trouble that has come upon you so unexpectedly, and I cannot sleep until I tell you what I have done to-night. Whatever injures you wounds Eglah, and solely on her account I felt justified in taking a step that no weaker motive could have sanctioned. I sat up to tell you that when I found you would not trust me with the truth, I hunted it by reading the note that fell this evening like a bombshell. I have no hesitation in confessing the fact. I am here for that purpose."

She set her small, white teeth grimly and clasped her hands behind her.

He looked down at her, as a mastiff at a barking pug, and, throwing back his head, laughed heartily, clapping his hands softly.

"Bravo, Methodist burglar! You seem an expert, and find locked doors no barrier. What would Eglah think of your breaking into my room, and into my correspondence?"

"Shall we ask her? Only my promise not to mention this matter to her prevents me from telling her as quickly and frankly as I have told you. May I speak to her?"

"Madam, you possess an arsenal of mental reservations, and I doubt whether you can keep a promise."

"I can be silent against my will, and even in defiance of my judgment. Try me."

"Then consider yourself on probation. Where is my hoax of a note?"

"Under your pillow, where you left it."

His eyes twinkled, and his voice shook as with suppressed laughter.

"A woman's curiosity cost us Eden. My dear little lady, what did you discover in my anonymous letter?"

"That 'Ely Twiggs' is a terrible menace to your peace of mind."

"Would you like a translation of that ugly occult phrase? It is merely a telegraphic cipher. You have conjured up a malignant chimera; rest assured it is only a dingy red-paper balloon, with a flickering taper inside. Good night. Pray allow no compunctious qualms to disturb the peace of your Methodist conscience."

"No church is responsible for errors of its members, and I wish I could believe it possible that your Episcopal conscience will allow you a night of refreshing sleep. For my dear child's sake, I hoped you would confide in me, and I regret that you withhold the truth. Good night, sir."

"Little foster-mother, remember your promise."

He held out his hand, but she declined the overture and walked away.

"My Methodist promise will bear any weight laid on it."

Without premonition, a sudden storm had swept over the city that night, and at two o'clock, when Eglah and Mr. Herriott went down the steps to enter their carriage, the stone pavement held tiny pools and rills of water.

"Wait, Eglah, your slippers will be soaked."

"I can run across on tiptoe."

"You shall not! Permit me."

He stooped, lifted her from the lower step, and placed her on the cushioned seat.

"How strong you are!" she said, laughing, as he entered the carriage and sat down opposite, not beside her.

"Physically – yes. If my force of will equalled my nerves and muscles, I should be a much happier man."

"Infirmity of will? You, – the most obstinate man I ever met! How little you know yourself!"

"You are so sure you read me aright, perhaps you understand why all the strength of my manhood has not saved me from staking my earthly hopes on a venture that may be fatal. Can you explain?"

"Is it some scientific scheme? Some theory that may prove a delusion?"

"It is simply the possibility that the woman I love will not give me her heart. Eglah, I have been patient. I wished you to see and know other men – to form your own ideal, to compare me with some more brilliant and attractive – before I asked for your love. Since the day I first saw you – a grieved child – at Nutwood, my heart has been entirely yours, and all my future is gilded with the hope of a home in which you will reign as my wife. I bring you the one unshared love of my life. May I have the blessed assurance that you will accept it?"

For some seconds Eglah neither moved nor spoke; then she slipped down on her knees and laid her head on his hands, that were folded together.

"Mr. Noel – dear Mr. Noel – I will never marry. Only one man in all the world is necessary to my happiness, and he is my father. What you tell me now is a surprise – a painful surprise to me – because I never thought of you as of some who flattered and even some who have asked my hand. You were always my best friend, my wise, sympathetic companion, and I never could think of you as desiring or needing any woman's affection. You have seemed unlike other men I meet in society, and I believed you cared most for books and scientific experiments, though I thought you always felt a very kind, friendly, brotherly interest in me. Oh, I am so sorry you have uttered such words to-night! You must know I am not like other women in our circle, and I have no intention of marrying. If I should select any man to love it might be you, because I respect and trust you so profoundly; but that could never happen to me. What have I inadvertently done to make you misjudge my feelings? You must forgive me. I never suspected."

As she pressed her face against his hands he felt her lips trembling, and his struggle for self-control was short and fierce. After a moment, he raised and replaced her on the seat and sat beside her.

"I can reproach only myself for a delusion that costs me more than you will ever know. In my loneliness the dream was so beautiful. I could not resist its fascination. Dear little girl, you are the only one I ever wished or asked to be my wife, and because you are so precious to me I will not surrender my hope, unless you force me. Remember the long years I have waited for you. In time, perhaps, you might learn to care for me. May I entreat you to try?"

"Mr. Noel, I trust you, I admire you – in a way I feel attached to you – but I must tell you the truth. I shall marry no one, not even you."

"Then I shall never repeat my folly. Be sure I will vex you no more; but there is something you can do to lessen my pain. If trouble or disaster or sorrow overtake you, will you promise to confide in me, to allow me to share it, as if I were indeed that elder brother you have tried to believe me?"

"Yes, Mr. Noel. After father I will always turn next to you, and you must not condemn me because, unintentionally, I have been so unfortunate as to hurt you."

"For several reasons I wish your father to know at once all that has been said to-night. He is aware of my intentions, and kind enough to approve them. One final request I trust you will not refuse me. The visit to my house on the Lake has been definitely arranged, and I particularly desire that no change of plan should be made. Henceforth no word of mine will ever recall this interview, and during your stay under my roof I assure you no allusion to my dead hopes shall annoy you. Trust me, and come."

The carriage stopped at Senator Kent's door. As Mr. Herriott led her up the steps, she noticed he barely touched her arm, and when he rang the bell she caught his hand between both of hers.

"Dear Mr. Noel – you do forgive me?"

A neighboring lamp shone full on his handsome face, pale and set, and a sudden consciousness of the unusual charm of his noble personality thrilled her. Withdrawing his hand, he held it behind him, and, as he looked down at her, his lips twitched.

"You have done me no wrong by simply following the true, womanly dictates of your pure heart. Marriage without genuine love is a degradation to which you could never stoop. I will love you always, always; but I find it hard to forgive myself for making utter shipwreck of a man's dearest aim in life. Good night."

As Mrs. Mitchell opened the door, he turned away and went swiftly into the street.

"Eglah! What is the matter? You are crying."

"How can I help it when I have hurt the noblest man in all the world – except father? My one true friend, who never failed to be good to me!"

"You have refused to marry Mr. Herriott? My baby, you will never find his equal. Your father can scarcely forgive this defeat of his pet scheme, dating from the time you were ten years old."

CHAPTER IX

"Herriott, I owe you an apology for coming so late, but feel quite sure you will pardon a delay that was unavoidable. I have kept your dinner waiting half an hour."

"No matter, provided you bring an appetite that can defy overdone fish. I am glad it is only delay, and not total failure. Vernon, you look so spent, may I venture to offer your reverence a tonic – club-labelled 'cocktail'? It is the best antidote I dare suggest for the slow method of suicide you have adopted."

"Thank you – no."

"Then come in to dinner."

"I wasted the whole afternoon trying to find a boy down on the East Side, but when at last I reached the house I was told he had moved from that neighborhood. He is a soloist at St. Hyacinth's, and I had promised him a booklet."

"Leighton Dane?"

"Yes. What do you know of him?"

"That he will sing no more at St. Hyacinth's. Henceforth his solos belong to choirs beyond the stars. The boy is slowly dying of consumption."

"When did you see him?"

"A few days ago. He is at No. 980 – Street, Brooklyn. Your cousin Eglah asked me to keep an eye on him. Poor little lad! His battle with pain and loneliness is pathetic, and I rather think the end is not far off."

"Loneliness? Who takes care of him?"

"His mother is away all day at her work, but an old German and his wife living on the same floor of the tenement look after him as best they can."

"Could you deliver the book to him?"

"If you wish it; but why not make another effort to see him?"

"My hands are so full. In two days I must run down to Washington, and then back home, where I am needed. How luxurious your quarters are! Less like a bachelor's den than one would expect."

"Next week I give up these rooms, and when I chance to be in the city shall live at the club."

"Is not this decision rather sudden?"

"No. For some time I have contemplated another expedition to Arizona and Montana, in quest of prehistoric records needed for an anthropological paper that Professor De Wette asked me to contribute to the next volume of Reports."

"What date have you fixed?"

"About the middle of July, immediately after the visit to 'Greyledge,' which Senator Kent and Eglah have promised as soon as Congress adjourns. I am sorry you could not arrange to join the small 'house party,' and rest yourself by fishing in the Lake, instead of the turbid pools of humanity."

"What about Calvary House? We expect you there."

"That pleasure must be deferred; but I have thought a good deal about your need of more ground there, and believe I have found just what you want. Come into the library, it is cooler, and I have some papers for you. You know the Ravenal lands – some twenty acres – lie across "Tangled Brook," west of your lines. The property was sold recently by the trustees and my agent bought it. Now you can easily bridge the stream, using the foundation of the old paper-mill dam, and by extending your fences cover the whole. I know the old farmhouse was burned years ago, but those pasture lands are fine, and that hill sloping south will make a good vineyard. Here are all the papers, and my deed to the Brotherhood. Stop! No thanks, not a word, or I cancel the transfer. Some day, when I visit you, I may not be welcome, because I promise you now, if your stewardship does not suit me and things seem mismanaged, I will most certainly turn you all out."

Father Temple laid the bundle of papers on the table and grasped Mr. Herriott's hand, pressing it warmly, but something in the bright, steady grey eyes warned him to attempt no verbal expression of gratitude.

His host lighted a cigar, and drew from a stand near his elbow a portfolio tied with purple tape.

"Does your reverence ever waste time now in sketches and water-color?"

"Life is far too strenuous for such trifling."

"How do you know that some day you will not be required to dig up that buried talent and answer the charge of neglecting to bring in the expected interest? Nature intended you for one of her artistic interpreters, and if you had been loyal to her commission you might rank to-day as R.A. Last summer I was searching an old trunk for a college text-book, when I happened to find some of your drawings, that were packed by mistake with my luggage in the bustle of leaving the university."

From the pile of loose sheets he held up one, and, after a moment's survey, in which he turned it at various angles, he handed it to his guest.

Father Temple was leaning back in a cushioned arm-chair, and against the violet velvet background his pale, placid, scholarly face was sharply silhouetted. Listlessly raising the sketch sidewise, so that a gas jet on his left shone upon it, he looked at it. The profound repose that habitually rested on his countenance broke up swiftly, as a sleeping pool shivers when a stone is hurled into its motionless depths. His lips whitened, and he laid the paper as a screen over his eyes. Mr. Herriott crossed the floor to the door of the dining-room, and, loitering deliberately, ordered coffee. When he came back, followed by a servant bearing coffee and liqueurs, the priest was standing at an open window, and in the clenched fingers of the hands clasped behind him the sketch quivered as though shaken by the wind.

"Close the door, Hawkins, and when I want you I will ring. Come, Vernon; I remember your fondness for coffee, and this is good and piping hot."

The thin figure in the girded cassock shook his head and leaned out of the window, staring up at the golden stars throbbing above the roar and din of the crowded street.

After some minutes, during which the host rattled cups and glasses, Father Temple walked up and down the room, then came back to the table. The despairing sorrow in his deep, soft eyes made Mr. Herriott rise instantly.

"Vernon, have I wounded you by my reminiscent babble of college days?"

Without a word, the arms of the priest were lifted to the man towering over him, and he laid his head on the shoulder of one who had never failed him.

"Temple, forgive me, dear old fellow, if I have broken rudely into some sacred, sealed chamber."

"You have done me a priceless kindness in restoring my picture, but with it comes the hour of humiliation I always knew must sooner or later overtake me. Noel, your good opinion is so precious to me I shrink from losing it. I have dreaded your condemnation next to that of my God. You always trusted and respected me, even in what you deemed foolish monkish extremes, and yet – and yet – "

"Sit down, and pull yourself together. You have fasted and prayed your starved nerves into a fit of womanish hysteria. I am no father confessor for you, and if you are not the true, loyal man I have believed you all these years, then, while you are under my roof, I prefer not to find out that you are a hypocrite."

He pushed his friend back into the easy chair, and handed him a glass of chartreuse, but it was put aside.

"Noel, you must hear me. After the first bitterness I shall feel relieved that you know literally all I can tell, and then you will understand many things in my life. To-day I am what I am, simply and solely in the hope of expiating the sin of my youth. Noel, the sin of my youth found me out early, and this life I lead is an attempted atonement. Do you begin to understand?"

Mr. Herriott held up the sketch, and, as he struck it sharply with his fingers, his face darkened.

"Whose portrait is this?"

"The woman – the young girl – whose life I blighted."

"Good God! Blighted? Is your villainy so black?"

"I am Father Temple, vowed to celibacy, and somewhere in the wide, cruel world a wife and child of mine may have gone down to perdition because I was a coward – a vile coward, too base for a brave man to recognize. I knew you would despise me, and I kept silent as long as I could. Do you wonder?"

Mr. Herriott stood over him like an avenging Viking.

"You betrayed a woman? Wife, or victim of – "

"Both. I married and I deserted her."

"The marriage was legal – no swindling sham?"

"Legal in form, though I was a minor and she a mere child."

"And you ensnared her deliberately, intending to – "

The priest sprang to his feet and his eyes flashed.

"I loved her, and married her secretly, and intended no wrong; but before I could publicly claim her – before I was of age and dared to face my father with the fact of my marriage – I lost her. She disappeared as completely as if the ocean rolled over her."

"Is this the unvarnished truth? There is nothing worse, nothing more heinous than what you have told me?" Mr. Herriott breathed quickly, as his keen, cold eyes searched severely the wan face before him.

"I have told you the whole, bitter truth."

"Then I have not entirely lost my friend. Now sit down; begin at the beginning of this black business, and let me try to share your load of trouble. Don't hurry – be explicit. Keep back nothing. If you intended no wrong, there must and shall be found some way to right it."

"Too late! If you take a white flower and inhale its perfume, and then carelessly drop it where hurrying crowds are sure to trample it into the dust, what hope that, search as you may, you will ever find it, or, finding it, be able to restore the torn, soiled, ruined petals? Wherever she is, no matter what she has become, what sin and shame stain and defile her, she is my wife. I swore before God I would take her for my wife, 'for better, for worse,' and though it is my fault – and mine only – that I did not publish the marriage, I have kept my vows, and am dedicated to life-long celibacy. My boyish cowardice – what awful shipwreck it has made of two lives! You want the details? It is a shameful story, but not long. In the early summer of my nineteenth year I spent vacation in the far Northwest, at an advanced army station, Post – , where father was in command of his regiment. Hunting was fine but dangerous, as Indians on the frontier were ugly just then, and several tribes were painting for the war path. One hot afternoon, tramping back to camp with my rifle on my shoulder, I went down a steep, wooded hill to drink at a spring, and as I parted the thick growth I saw a cow chewing her cud, while a bare-footed girl stooped and milked into a cedar pail. She sprang up, much alarmed, and stood against a glowing background of scarlet rhododendrons. Her calico bonnet had fallen off, her sleeves rolled up showed her white, dimpled arms, and all over her head and shoulders the gold-colored hair was twisted into little curls and waves and tendrils that glittered like gilt wire. As she stared at me with large purplish-blue eyes, her bright red lips trembled, and – " He paused, and involuntarily wrung his thin white hands.

"I had seen handsome women, and many lovely girls, but never so exquisite a creature as this, and from that moment I lost reason, prudence, everything but conscience, and my heritage of honorable instincts. Nona Moorland was the daughter of a teamster attached to father's command; a brutal, rough man, whose second wife – a selfish, jealous virago – made the step-daughter's life a cruel burden. They occupied a log cabin just outside the Post parade grounds, and the girl was never allowed in sight of drill lines except when under convoy of the stepmother she assisted in carrying to headquarters the freshly laundered clothes of the officers. Having been forbidden, under threat of corporeal punishment, to speak to or be seen with any soldier, save in her father's cabin, she was terrified at the danger of a discovery of our acquaintance; hence our interviews were secret, and adroitly arranged to elude suspicion. Her extraordinary personal beauty and gentleness of deportment more than compensated for illiteracy and humble origin, and after a few days I planned a clandestine marriage, to which she readily assented. The Post chaplain had made a pet of me, because I aided him in some botanical and geological tramps close to the frontier, and finally he consented to help us, provided his agency was never betrayed. We both swore we would not divulge his name or knowledge of our scheme, and so one starry night he and Hill, a private soldier who went as witness, stole out, and met Nona and me in a dense grove of trees near Moorland's cabin. There we were married according to the ritual of the Episcopal Church. I was not quite nineteen, she a slender girl just past her fifteenth birthday. Under the quiet stars that shone as our altar lights, we took solemn, life-long vows as husband and wife, and there, when a written certificate had been given to Nona, we all joined hands and pledged ourselves in the sight of God to keep the secret until I was of age, or thought it prudent to publish the marriage. To her I meant no more wrong than to myself, and kept to the form of law, knowing we were minors, and that no license legalized the ceremony which I believed and argued the Church sanctified. You knew my father sufficiently well to remember how terribly stern he was, how morose he often seemed, and I dared not defy him. For three weeks life was a brief vision of heaven to Nona and me. She was so lovely, so tender, so humbly conscious of her social inferiority and lack of education, so fired with an ambitious zeal for culture and improvement to fit herself for the circle where Colonel Temple's son was born to move. Then the bolt fell. A courier from the nearest telegraph station brought news that father had been promoted, was ordered to Washington, and would soon go abroad on some military commission. I begged to spend the remaining days of my vacation at Post – , but was sharply refused, and all things were ordered in readiness for our departure next day at sunrise."

Some overwhelming memory arrested the narrative, and Father Temple held the portrait sketch toward the light. Then he crossed his arms on the table and bowed his face upon them. The room was very still, and there seemed suddenly a startling insistence in the harsh sound of an organ that began to grind out "O promise me," on the pavement below. Mr. Herriott threw down a coin, closed the window, and resumed his seat.

"Noel, you must think me weak and unmanly. You are so strong yourself, you can scarcely – "

"Strong? I think if I had to carry your burden I should go out and hang myself."

"That last interview is a perpetual nightmare no noon sunshine ever dispels. Nona was frantic at the unexpectedly sudden separation, and she clung to me like a drowning child; but by degrees she accepted the inevitable, and her trust in me was supreme. She would be patient, and study books the chaplain would provide, and rely on him to forward her letters, and receive and find means to deliver mine. A full moon showed me her tearful face when we stood up to say good-bye. Oh, beautiful, tender, devoted, and pure as any lily God ever set to bloom in a wicked world! As I took her in my arms, she kissed me repeatedly, and I felt her lips tremble on mine as she sobbed:

"'No matter what happens, you must trust me as perfectly as I trust you. If we keep true to each other, all the world can't part us long.'

"That farewell vision abides with me – sleeping, it walks as a living presence through my dreams; waking, it thrusts itself between me and my God; and when I kneel before the marble image of the Mother of my Lord, her holy face is hidden by that of my fair, sweet young wife. It has become an obsession from which I cannot escape. After I went east, two letters reached me; then, in the late autumn when father had sailed, I was stricken with typhoid fever, that kept me prisoner for three months, and the inflammatory rheumatism that followed it so completely wrecked me, I was carried to the country home of an aunt in Massachusetts, in whose care father left me when he went to Europe. In my convalescence I wrote repeatedly under cover to the chaplain, signing only my middle name, Pembroke, but heard nothing until the next June. While still on crutches, I went for a day's visit to college to collect and pack my belongings, and there I found one dusty, mislaid letter from Nona, full of sad forebodings. The chaplain had wandered too far away to a mountain range, accompanied only by an orderly, who reported on his return that his companion had been scalped by Indians while he was examining some rock ledges, and that he had barely escaped by desperate riding. A cavalry troop, sent out to recover the body and avenge the death, was ambushed in a wooded defile and four troopers were killed, among the number Hill. The letter had been written in January – five months before. Both witnesses of our marriage in the grave! Anxiety and distress brought on renewal of rheumatic fever, and I was crippled in hands and feet for six terrible weeks. One day, as I was trying my ability to walk about the room, a delayed letter was forwarded from college – the last I ever received from Nona. Her father had died very suddenly from congestion of the lungs, and his wife returned immediately to her family in Arkansas; but because of my poor Nona's condition, which had subjected her to severe abuse and horrible accusations, the stepmother had cast her off, refused her recognition, and abandoned her. Because she refused to divulge the name of her husband, her declaration that she was a wife only increased the torrent of insults that swept her beyond the pale of respectability. She wrote that one friend – the only person who believed her assertion that she had been lawfully married – was just then leaving the Post for his old home, his time of service having expired, and he had kindly carried her in a covered wagon to a small village some days' travel east of the Post, where he found shelter for her until after the birth of her child. She begged I would send money to pay her board and also to enable her to travel east and live near me, because she was so terror-stricken among strangers. The same day my father summoned me to Europe, having decided I should attend lectures in Germany and at Oxford. By express, I forwarded the money to Nona, in accordance with her directions – "Care of Delia Brown, Thompsonville, – Territory" – and I wrote her, explaining all the circumstances, assuring her I would join her as soon as I could travel, and that henceforth we should never be separated. A few hours later I was laid up with a severe relapse, and when, finally, I started west in September, I was still so lame any movement was torture. At last the stage coach put me down at the cluster of log houses called Thompsonville, and by the aid of crutches I found my way to a low, dark cabin of two rooms, where Delia Brown made a scanty living by washing and ironing for men attached to a party of prospecting miners. She was a gaunt, sinister looking woman from Maine, with small, deep-set, faded yellow eyes that bored like a gimlet, and as she took a pipe from her ugly bluish lips and greeted me my heart sank. Where was Nona? Gone – with the man who brought her there, and who 'paid well for her keep.' When? Several weeks ago. Did she receive my letter, and had the money reached her? Yes, the money had been delivered to her – Delia Brown – and she had given it to the woman Nona, in the presence of one Josh' Smith. My letter had seemed to terrify the woman, and as soon as she knew I was coming she went away suddenly, saying she was going to New Orleans, and she and the man could take care of the baby. What was the man's name? He called himself Lay' Walker, but she doubted 'if he was not somebody else, and folks had their suspicions about the whole affair.' The baby boy was four months old when the man and woman took it away, but it was 'such a poor, puny, ailing child it had little chance to live.' What I suffered then only God will ever know, but faith in Nona sustained me while I went from cabin to cabin, receiving on all sides confirmation of Delia Brown's statements from women who had met her, and also from the mail and express agent – Josh' Smith – who assured me he had delivered the letter and package of money addressed to Nona Moorland, care of Delia Brown, to the latter, and exhibited her receipt. Lay' Walker was described as a very 'handsome Spanish-looking young fellow,' and he and the woman seemed fond of each other. He spent his money freely on her, and talked about Florida and banana growing, and said they wanted to get to New Orleans, where his friends had a schooner running in the West India fruit trade. After an exhaustive search, I made my way to New Orleans and engaged police assistance, but no clue could be found. Then I arranged advertisements to run six months, and went on to Pensacola and to Tampa. I advertised in two Florida newspapers, asking Nona Moorland to write to me, care of my father's lawyer in Boston. No response, no word, no hint ever reached me. When December arrived and I had no tidings, I deposited money in a Boston bank to the credit of Nona Moorland, and leaving instructions that all mail matter should be forwarded promptly to me, I sailed for Europe, shattered in body, almost hopeless, and the tortured prey of remorseful regret at the awful consequence of my midsummer madness."