Bonnibel flew up the stairs to her own room, still clenching the fatal paper tightly in her hand, and locking her door, threw herself downward upon the carpet and lay there like one dead. She had not fainted. Every nerve was keenly alive and quivering with pain. Her heart was beating in great, suffocating throbs, her throat felt stiff and choked as if compressed by an iron hand, and her head ached terribly as if someone had hurled a heavy stone upon it. Her whole being seemed to be but one great pulse of intense agony, yet she lay still and moveless, save that now and then a convulsive clutch of the small hand pressed to her throat showed that life still inhabited that beautiful frame. Life! The thought came to her suddenly and painfully. She raised herself slowly and heavily, as if the weight of her sorrow crushed her down to earth, and the full realization of the terrible change broke over her. Leslie Dane was _dead_. That graceful form, that handsome face was hidden beneath the damp earth mould. The dark eyes of her artist husband would never shine down upon her again with the love-light beaming in them, those lips whose smiles she had loved so well would never press hers again as they had done that night when he had blessed her and called her his wife. But _she_--she was a living, agonized creature, the plaything of fate--oh, God! she thought, clasping her hands together wildly, oh, God! that she were dead and lying in the grave with the loved one she would never see again. She felt in all its passionate intensity the force of another's heart-wrung utterance. "Dead, dead!" she moaned. "Oh, God! since _he_ could die, The world's a grave, and hope lies buried there." Ah! Bonnibel, sweet Bonnibel! It is a dark world indeed on which your tearful gaze looks forth! It has been the grave of hope to many, yet destiny pushes us forward blindly, and we cannot stay her juggernaut wheels as they roll over our hearts. "I am eighteen years old, and I am a _widow_," she moans at last, and staggers blindly to her feet, pushing back the fair locks from her brow with shaking hands. "_I am a widow!_" Oh! the pathos of the words! As she speaks them she draws the blinds, drops the curtains, and the room is shrouded in darkness. She has shut out the world from the sight of suffering. You and I, my reader, will turn aside, too, from the contemplation of that cruelly tried young heart as it fights the battle in the gloom and silence. "Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is blessed who ne'er was born." * * * * * Six days later Colonel Carlyle was ushered into Mrs. Arnold's drawing-room and sent up his card to Miss Vere. After a slight delay she came gliding in, pale and pure as a snow-drop, and demure as a little nun. Colonel Carlyle both felt and saw that some subtle and indefinable change had come over her as he bowed over the cold, white hand she placed in his.