“The letters may tell me more!” she added, in the same frightened whisper, refolding the certificate. They did--for they were in the long, sloping chirography of her sister-in-law, and signed “Your ever-fond, but lonely wife.” Each contained, moreover, allusions to “Ellis,” to “Clermont,” to “Julia,” and to “Herbert”--all family names in the Dorrance connection; spoke gratefully of her parents' kindness to his “poor Louise” in the absence of “her beloved Julius;” and was liberally spiced with passionate protestations of her inconsolableness and yearnings for his return. Both were dated ten years back, and the paper was yellow with time, besides being creased and thumbed as by many readings. “What am I to do?” thought Mabel, sinking into her chair, trembling all over with terror and incertitude. If there were one sentiment in Winston Aylett's heart that equalled his haughtiness, it was love for his wife. But could it be that he had totally forgotten pride and his habitual caution in the selection of the woman who was to be the partner of his home, fortune, and reputation--possibly the mother of children who were to perpetuate the noble name he bore? By what miracle of unrighteous craft, what subornation of witnesses, what concealments, what barefaced and unscrupulous falsehoods had this adventuress been imposed upon him as unmarried, when the evidence of her former wedlock was held by a low stroller--a drunken wretch who might betray it in an unguarded or insane hour, and who, judging from his exterior, would not be averse to publishing or selling the information if he could make more money by doing this than by preserving the secret. And how came he by these papers? Confused, partly by his numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surreptitiously the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that her antecedents were unsuspected in her present home, the thought of extorting a bribe to continued silence, from the wealthy lady of Ridgeley, would have occurred to any common rascal with more audacity than principle. It was but a spark--the merest point of light that showed her the verge of the precipice toward which one link after another of the chain of circumstantial evidence was dragging her. Groping dizzily among her recollections of that Christmas night, there gleamed luridly upon her the vision of Mrs. Aylett's strange smile, as she said, “It may be that his wife, if she were cognizant of his condition, would not lift a finger or take a step to save his life, or to prolong it for an hour!”