“I pray Heaven, Stuart, you may never know the darkness of those days, the unspeakable anguish, the depth of despair! Weeks passed. I could find no trace, and when I was tortured with the conflicting emotions which surged within me an event occurred that put the last stroke to my misery, added the ghastly weight of a wrong to my burden, a wrong which I could never wipe away. “I had resigned my post at the club, and, in my eager restlessness, wandering about the London streets, either alone or with one of my detectives, I was lost even to the remembrance of the frequenters of my old haunts. One day, however, I met a man who had been very friendly with me, and in the course of conversation--I would gladly have avoided him if I could--he told me there were several letters awaiting me at the club. None knew where to send them. “I went for the letters, urged by a wild hope that Gladys might have written. She had. It was a letter that is graven on my heart in characters of blood. Heaven give me strength to tell you; for even now, after so many years, I grow faint when I think of it! It was a long, hurriedly-written letter--the letter of a distraught woman. I will not give it to you here; there were no reproaches, but there was a clear statement of facts given by a broken heart. In my anxiety I could scarcely read the first lines, but some words further on caught my eyes, and held them as by magnetic power. They spoke, Stuart, of the persecution she had endured for weeks from Hugh Everest. Again and again, Gladys wrote, she felt urged to speak to me, but she knew I valued him as a friend, and she trusted that his honor, his manliness, would overcome his baser feelings, and that he would go away. Of Guy Conway she spoke tenderly and earnestly. The letter I had brought forward as a proof of their guilt was indeed written by him; but it referred to a painting he was engaged upon of herself and her child, which she had intended leaving at her aunt’s house, hoping that the sight of the baby’s angel-face would break down the icy barrier which caused her such pain. This had been a little plan of his, suggested when he saw how the estrangement troubled her. She was at Conway’s studio, but only for the purpose of discussing the delivery of the picture; and, catching sight of Hugh Everest, in a moment of agitation and dislike she openly expressed a wish not to see him. Conway at once undertook to prevent their meeting, with what terrible result you know. My wife ended her letter by stating that she was gone from my life forever with her child. The shock of my suspicions had destroyed all joy or happiness evermore for her; but, though separated, she would live as became my wife and the mother of my child, for whose sake alone she could now endure life. This ended it; there was no sign, no clew, no word to lead me to her.