There was a gurgling sound in Georgie’s throat, as her first impulse was to scream, while a prickly sensation ran like lightning all through her right side, and she felt as if her mouth was twitching and turning toward her right ear; but she did not stop to question the meaning of these strange symptoms. She only thought of the fatal letter and its signature, and how _she_ was ruined forever. The evil she had so much dreaded, and from which she had thought to escape, had come upon her at last. _He was not dead_; he still walked the earth; he lived and breathed not very far away, and had summoned her to meet him, and she must go. She had no thought of doing otherwise, and with the fearful agony gnawing at her heart, she consulted her watch to see how long before twelve. Nearly one hour and a half, and she clasped her hands together so tightly that the nails broke the skin in more than one place. But she did not feel it, or know that the blood was trickling from her nose until she saw the stains upon her white dressing-gown and on her long black hair. Mechanically she walked to the marble basin and washed and bathed her face until the flow had ceased; then she took up the letter again and read it a second time, while every fibre quivered and throbbed, and her eyes felt as if protruding from their sockets. And all this time she had uttered no sound; but when by chance she saw upon her table Roy’s picture, which, since her engagement she had kept in her room, the magnitude of the calamity which had overtaken her, burst upon her at once, and with a low moan she fell prostrate upon her face, whispering to herself, “Roy is lost,—lost,—and so am I.” She knew that was so; knew there was no help, no escape for her now, and again that prickly sensation ran through her side, and a keen pain like a knife cut through her temples, where the veins were swelling and growing purple with the pressure of blood. Fortunately for her, unconsciousness came at last to her relief, unconsciousness which lasted until half-past eleven, and everything and everybody in the house was still. Then she roused herself, looked at her watch again, and prepared for action. He had written: “Bring jewels if you have no money:” and knowing his rapacious disposition, she took her costly diamonds, necklace and all, her emeralds and pearls, and placing them in a little box, hunted up her purse, and laughed a kind of delirious laugh to find there were one hundred dollars in it. She had no hope of Roy; it was impossible now that she should be his wife; there was a bar between them,—a living bar,—raised, as it were, from the dead; and, though possibly, nay, probably, silence with regard to the past could easily be bought, and Roy need never know her secret even now, she was not bad enough at heart to let him take her to his arms while that man waiting for her outside lived and roamed through the world.