“I pass it over now, as I did when I heard it. My eyes fell once more on that letter--the letter that has proved the curse of my life. I read again the words I had written when full of hope, as a spring morning is of beauty. They seemed to raise living heads like poisonous adders and sting me. No further proof was wanting to me. Mary Thorne had evidently thought some day or other, to make her price of these fragments of a letter. She had carefully preserved them--she had gathered them from a fireplace in Clarice’s room. Then she watched her mistress. Clarice, under pretext of a violent headache, shut herself up in her room, and spent many hours in practicing writing. Pieces of paper that the girl had preserved showed that she had been imitating your handwriting. Should Kenelm Eyrle ever read this story, or hear of it, he will remember that we had often in our childish days been astonished by the facility with which Clarice imitated different handwritings. “Shut up in her room, she forged that letter in your name to me. Deliberately, wickedly, cruelly, falsely forged the words that cut me off from the world of men, blighted my life, marred every hope and plan, brought curse and ruin upon me, the words that have lost me this world, and, I fear, oh! I fear, will lose me the next. Mary Thorne watched her young mistress dress herself and steal unobserved from the house to post the letter that was my death warrant. And then she waited and watched, thinking that when I recovered from your dismissal I should turn with my whole heart to her. I did not do so. I have never loved any woman but you, my Hermione. I never could. I tried, but it was not in my power. You are soul of my soul, life of my life, my heart has never beat for any love but yours. So, my wife, I heard this tale of treachery, of the cruel and wicked wrong done to me. Mary Thorne had saved all these fragments of papers and lived in the hope of some day making money of them. She was in love with James Conyers, the groom who had taken the letter, and whose assistance I had sought. The bribe I offered proved sufficient for her. It was a large sum of money to be paid on the spot, and a promise that James Conyers should have the farm called ‘The Willows’ when the lease of the then tenant had expired. One morning, a beautiful bright morning, when the world was full of melody, she told me this. We were standing under a grove of tall, stately oak trees, and, Hermione, as the words dropped slowly from her lips they maddened me. I can remember watching the sunlight as it came filtering through the great green boughs. I can remember listening to the sweet song of a little bird, while mad anger and fierce, wild passion ran riot in my veins. Ah, my darling! a man commits a great crime, and his excuse is, ‘I was mad!’ People cry him down. They say, ‘This is but an excuse; he was sane enough!’ Ah! my wife, I know that madness comes in swift, keen darts of flame, in a