Early in the following week the half-expected, half-dreaded fateful letter arrived. 'He had taken _their_ passage,'--'_our passage_,' she repeated to herself--'in the _John T. Whitman_ for Callao, in the name of Mr. and Mrs. H. Johnson. He had arranged for the marriage at the little church at South Yarra, on the morning of the day the vessel was to sail. She would sail on that afternoon, and no humbug about it; he had seen the first mate and made things right with him, so his information was good. Nothing remained, then, but for his heart's darling Estelle to hold herself in readiness to be at St. Mark's at the hour appointed, and all would yet be well. What he had suffered since they parted, no tongue could tell!... She might imagine his feelings when he became aware of the diabolical crime that had been committed. He was half-way to Melbourne when he heard of it. No doubt justice would overtake the guilty parties. '_She_ had escaped--that was everything. Poor Con Gray was right when he said it should be his _last trip_.' And so the day was at hand--close, inevitable! This was on Tuesday. Saturday was the day fixed for the sailing of the _John T. Whitman_--for the joining of two hearts, two bodies, two souls--irrevocably, eternally--in this world and the world to come. For how can the human mind realise the essential dissociation during the probation of this earthly life, or even amid the spiritualised conditions of another existence, of those _once_ made one flesh--wedded, and welded together under the sanction of the most tremendous of human sacraments? Like most prospective occurrences seen dimly and afar, Estelle Chaloner had not closely analysed her feelings when the day of doom should arrive. Now, she experienced a kind of minute analysis of her sensations, distinctly painful in its intensity. She read and re-read Lance's letter, and, among other things, marked with surprise an occasional lapse in grammar, or the use of a small letter when a capital was imperative. Even the handwriting, though more like Lance's letters from school than his latter-day epistles, seemed cramped and laboured. 'Poor fellow, poor fellow!' she said softly to herself, 'I suppose he hasn't written much lately. Australia is a bad country for correspondence, and yet----' here she smiled and blushed slightly as she recalled the pile of home letters she had watched Mr. Stirling despatch one Sunday morning, and her playful reference to his dutiful habits. 'People differ in Australia, I suppose,' she continued, 'as in all other places. What ignorant folly it is to think otherwise!' and again she sighed--sighed deeply; then rose from her seat half impatiently. 'It is my fate,' she said; 'man or woman, who can escape their destiny?'