“I know nothing about her,” was the reply, and the sash fell with a rattling sound that struck like clods upon a coffin upon the desolate heart of Anson. He stood upon the pavement with one foot resting on a trunk, and his eyes turned to the windows of his late dwelling, as if expecting the form of his wife to appear there. The voice of the watchman, calling the first hour of the night, aroused him from his abstraction, and suggested the necessity of present action. He remembered that he had a duplicate key of the street door, and if not fastened within, he could at least gain admittance. On applying the instrument, it was evident that the person who had last left the house, had egressed through the door, for no bar or bolt betrayed the caution of an inmate. Anson engaged the watchman to place his effects in the hall, and procure a light. Having once more secured the main entrance of the house, he wandered through its tenantless chambers, like a suffering ghost among scenes of its happier hours. The splendid paraphernalia which wealth and taste had spread throughout that happy mansion, were there yet. Not an ornament had been removed, nor had the most fragile article decayed,—nay, the very exotics in the bow-pots had begun to put forth their tender blossoms under the genial influence of the season. But human life was absent. She that had diffused joy, and hope, and a heaven-like halo round her, was gone. Mad with apprehension, Anson rushed to his wife’s bed-chamber, hoping there to find some clue to her mysterious departure. Her toilet was in confusion; ornaments lay scattered about; and a diamond ring, his gift to her on her last birth-day, shone, on the approach of the light, so like a living thing, that Anson, in the wildness of his brain, thought that its thousand eyes flashed with intelligence of its departed mistress. On a small writing desk lay some sheets of pure paper, and in the open drawer a sealed note caught the eye of Anson. He seized it with a trembling hand, but paused ere he opened it; a sickness, like that of death, settled down upon his heart. Unhappy man! What had he to hope or fear?—he read: “Husband:—We meet no more on earth. At the bar of eternal justice your curse will blast me! I am in the coils of a fiend, disguised like a god! As the fluttering bird, though conscious of destruction, obeys the fatal fascination of the serpent’s eye, so I, beholding in the future nought but despair, yield, a victim to a passion that has mocked my struggles to subdue it. You must be happy because you are virtuous, and in mercy forget the fallen, “Josephine.”