"_I know now that I ought never to have married you, Oswald_," wrote Lady Eversleigh. "_The sacrifice which you made for my sake was too great a one. No happiness could well come of such an unequal bargain. You gave me everything, and I could give you so little. The cloud upon my past life was black and impenetrable. You took me nameless, friendless, unknown; and I can scarcely wonder if, at the first breath of suspicion, your faith wavered and your love failed. Farewell, dearest and best of men! You never can know how truly I have loved you; how I have reverenced your noble nature. In all that has come to pass between us since the first hour of our miserable estrangement, nothing has grieved me so deeply as to see your generous soul overclouded by suspicions and doubts, as unworthy of you as they are needless and unfounded. Farewell! I go back to the obscurity from whence you took me. You need not fear for my future. The musical education which I owe to your generous help will enable me to live; and I have no wish to live otherwise than humbly. May heaven bless you_!" HONORIA. This was all. There were no complaints, no entreaties. The letter seemed instinct with the dignity of truth. "And she has gone forth alone, unprotected. She has gone back to her lonely and desolate life," thought the baronet, inclined, for a moment at least, to believe in his wife's words. But in the next instant he remembered the evidence of Lydia Graham--the wild and improbable story by which Honoria had tried to account for her absence. "No no," he exclaimed; "it is all treachery from first to last. She is hiding herself somewhere near at hand, no doubt to wait the result of this artful letter. And when she finds that her artifices are thrown away--when she discovers that my heart has been changed to adamant by her infamy--she will go back to her lover, if he still lives to shelter her." A hundred conflicting ideas confused Sir Oswald's brain. But one thought was paramount--and that was the thought of revenge. He resolved to send for his lawyer early the next morning, to make a new will in favour of his sister's two sons, and then to start in search of the man who had robbed him of his wife's affection. Reginald would, of course, be able to assist him in finding Victor Carrington. While Sir Oswald mused thus, the man of whom he was thinking watched him through the narrow space between the curtains. "Shall it be to-night?" thought Carrington. "It cannot be too soon. He might change his mind about his will at any moment; and if it should happen to-night, people will say the shock of his wife's flight has killed him." Sir Oswald's folded arms rested on the table; his head sank forward on his arms. The passionate emotions of the day, the previous night of agony, had at last exhausted him. He fell into a doze--a feverish, troubled sleep. Carrington watched him for upwards of a quarter of an hour as he slept thus.