“My sister and I left Boston, both of us in better spirits than we had been since leaving England, for we believed that everything had been so successfully concealed there was not the slightest danger of discovery. We came back to our home to find mamma more comfortable than when we left her, having had a bright, cheerful visit with her old friend, while she appeared delighted with the improvement which our trip had made in us. But she lived only one short month after that. She took a sudden cold, which brought on a hemorrhage that terminated her life in a few hours. “More than this,” Mrs. Mapleson went on, hurriedly, while she pressed her clasped hands over her heart, as if to hold in check its painful throbbings, while she related the saddest event of her whole life, “on the very day that she was buried a bulky package was brought to me, postmarked ‘London.’ It contained considerable manuscript, a Bank of England note for one hundred and fifty pounds, my marriage certificate, and—a letter. The letter told me—oh, William!” she burst forth in a quavering voice, “you _knew_ that your Annie must die. You had to face the dread fact before it really came, and you were somewhat prepared for it; but I—I had no warning; the shock fell like a thunderbolt to crush me! My Charlie was dead long before I knew it. He had been in his grave nearly a fortnight when the terrible news came to me. The letter was from a friend of my husband, and stated that he had met with an accident that must result fatally, having been—crushed—in a falling elevator.” The poor woman appeared hardly capable of going on. It seemed as if all the agony of that dreadful time was revived by this recital. “He had only a few hours to live,” she went on, at last, “and, though he could not hold a pen to write me one line, he made up that package with his own hands, telling his friend that it was to be forwarded to Miss Estelle Everet. You see, he kept my secret even while dying, and would not send me one of the fond messages of which I know his heart must have been full, for fear of betraying me. He said that I would take charge of the publishing of the manuscript, if I thought best to give it to the world, for the expenses of which he inclosed the Bank of England note. That, however, was only a blind, for the manuscript was in such a crude state it could not be published, and he had simply taken that way to send me, without exciting suspicion, the only existing proof of our marriage, and what little money he possessed.