was dawning, fell into a fitful feverish sleep, haunted by horrible dreams, in which he and Katharine, the dead man and Gordon Frere, all played conspicuous parts, being mixed up in that dreadfully grotesque manner only possible under dream-influence. He seemed only to have closed his eyes--in reality he had been asleep but a couple of hours--when he was aroused by a knocking at the door, and the voice of his servant, who, according to usual custom, had brought the post-letters to his bedroom door. In an instant Streightley sprang up, all the events of the previous day--Guyon's death, Katharine's absence, his own misery--all flashing upon him at once, opened the door, and there, on the top of the little heap, saw a letter in Katharine's well-known hand. He seized it instantly, was about to tear it open, and stopped--stopped, for his heart was beating loudly, and there was a choking sensation in his throat, and a film over his eyes. He sat down on a chair, placed the letter on the table beside him, and passed his hand over his brow. The whole room reeled before him; he felt that he must, and yet that he dared not break that seal. The answer to the question that had been tormenting him all night, the key to the enigma of his wife's departure, lay before him, and yet he hesitated to avail himself of it. He remained irresolute for some minutes; then he took up the letter quietly, opened it, and read as follows: "This is the last time I shall ever hold communication with you, and therefore it is well that I should be explicit. By the merest accident I have become acquainted with the plot by which the whole of my life was maimed and perverted, my happiness blighted, my feelings trampled on, and my girlish pride mortified and humbled. In that plot were two conspirators; one who basely sold an honest, trusting, loving girl--his daughter; the other, who, by the mere accidental advantage of his wealth, was enabled to buy that girl for his wife. By neither, save as a mere matter of barter, something to be bought and sold, was I, that girl, considered. One of the plotters has been removed beyond the reach of my vengeance, and I shall take care to prevent the other from any opportunity of further villainy, so far as I am concerned. I have turned my back upon my father's corpse, and I turn my back on your house. I leave behind me all the price at which you purchased me; I take nothing with me but my mother's jewels, to which I suppose I have a right, and the unalterable determination which I have formed; and that is, in this world or the next, living or dying, never to forgive you, Robert Streightley, for your share in my degradation, and never to look upon your face again.--K.S." END OF VOL. II. LONDON: ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. End of Project Gutenberg's Kissing the Rod, Vol. 2 (of 3), by Edmund Yates