And during those weeks the good woman could learn nothing of the history of the beautiful young stranger, who persistently refused to divulge one word concerning herself. She would turn her face to the wall and weep so violently when any allusion was made to her past that the grave digger's wife gave up questioning her. One morning the bed was empty. It had not been slept in. The girl had fled in the night. Who she was, or where she had gone, was to them the darkest, deepest mystery. Would it ever be revealed? They could not discuss it with the old minister or any of the neighbors, for their lips were sealed in eternal silence concerning the matter. "I feel sure the end of this matter is not yet," said old Adam, prophetically. "When the girl comes face to face with the dastardly villain she wedded that night, it will end in a tragedy." "God forbid!" murmured his wife with a shudder; but down in her own heart she felt that her husband had spoken the truth; the tragic end of this affair had not yet come. CHAPTER XI. "YOU ARE DISINHERITED--EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS MINE." Faynie had indeed departed from that humble home as she had entered it, in the dark, dim silence of the bitter-cold night. She made her way as best she could to the station which, fortunately enough, was not far distant. The station master was old and anxious to get home, and therefore paid little heed to the little dark-robed figure who bought a ticket to New York, and soon after crept silently aboard of the train which steamed into the little depot of the hamlet, almost buried in the snowdrifts across the hills. Weak and faint from her recent illness, Faynie, the beautiful, petted little heiress of a short time before, huddled into a corner of the seat by the door, and drawing her veil carefully over her face, wept silently and unheeded as the midnight express bore her along to her destination. She was going home to Beechwood; going back to the home she had left in such high spirits to join the lover who was to be all in all to her forever more; the lover who was to shield her henceforth and forever from the world's storms, and was to be all devotion to her and love her fondly until death did them part. And this had been the end of it. Her high hopes lay in ruins around her. Her idol had been formed of commonest clay, and lay crumbled in a thousand fragments at her feet. Surely, no young girl's love dream ever had such a sad awakening, and was so cruelly dispelled. She would go home to her haughty old father, tell him all, then lie down at his feet and die. That would end it all. Even in that moment lines she had once read came back to her with renewed meaning: "And this is all! The end has come at last! The bitter end of all that pleasant dream, That cast a hallow o'er the happy past, Like golden sunshine on a summer stream.