"The carriage door was sharply opened from within, and my mother stepped out and stood before me, tall and grave, in her neat dark travelling dress, her fine features sharp and clear in the wintry gloom. "'Mother!' I exclaimed aghast. "'I know I am not the person you expected, George,' she said quietly. 'Badly as you have behaved to me, I am sorry for your disappointment.' "'Where is Esperanza?' I cried, unheeding my mother's address. "It was only afterwards that her words came back to me--in that long dull afterwards when I had leisure to brood over every detail in this agonizing scene. "'She is safe, and in good hands, and she is where you will never see her again.' "'That's a lie!' I cried. 'If she is among the living, I will find her. If she is dead, I will follow her.' "'You are violent and unreasonable; but I suppose your romantic infatuation must excuse you. When you have read this letter, you will be calmer, I hope.' "She gave me a letter in Esperanza's writing. We had moved a few paces from the church steps while we talked. I read the letter, walking slowly along the street, my mother at my side. "'DEAREST, "'I am going away. I am not to be your wife. It was a happy dream, but a foolish one. I should have ruined your life. That has been made clear to me; I love you far too dearly to be your enemy. You will never see me again. Don't be unhappy about me. I shall be well cared for. I am going very far away; but if it were to the farthest end of the earth, and if I were to live a hundred years, I should never cease to love you, or learn to love you less. "'Good-bye for ever, "'ESPERANZA.' "'I know whose hand is in this,' I said,--'Miss Marjorum.' "'Miss Marjorum is my true and loyal friend, and yours too, though you may not believe it.' "'Whoever it may be who has stolen my love away from me, that person is my dire and deadly foe. Whether the act is yours or hers, it is the act of my bitterest enemy, and I shall ever so remember it. Look here, mother, let there be no misunderstanding between you and me. I love this girl better than my life. Whatever trick you have played upon her, whatever cajoleries you and Miss Marjorum have brought to bear upon her, whatever false representations you may have made, appealing to her unselfishness against her love, you have done that which will wreck your son's life unless you can undo it.' "'I have saved my son from the shipwreck his own folly would have made of his life,' my mother answered calmly. 'I have seen what these unequal marriages come to--before the wife is thirty.' "'It would be no unequal marriage. The girl I love is a lady.'