It then wanted nearly five minutes to the half-hour. I _looked_ my gratitude to Major Fitz-David for sparing me those last minutes: I could not speak to him or to Benjamin. In silence we three got into a cab and drove to the hotel. The landlady met us in the hall. Nothing had been seen or heard of Eustace. There was a letter waiting for me upstairs on the table in our sitting-room. It had been left at the hotel by a messenger only a few minutes since. Trembling and breathless, I ran up the stairs, the two gentlemen following me. The address of the letter was in my husband’s handwriting. My heart sank in me as I looked at the lines; there could be but one reason for his writing to me. That closed envelope held his farewell words. I sat with the letter on my lap, stupefied, incapable of opening it. Kind-hearted Benjamin attempted to comfort and encourage me. The Major, with his larger experience of women, warned the old man to be silent. “Wait!” I heard him whisper. “Speaking to her will do no good now. Give her time.” Acting on a sudden impulse, I held out the letter to him as he spoke. Even moments might be of importance, if Eustace had indeed left me. To give me time might be to lose the opportunity of recalling him. “You are his old friend,” I said. “Open his letter, Major, and read it for me.” Major Fitz-David opened the letter and read it through to himself. When he had done he threw it on the table with a gesture which was almost a gesture of contempt. “There is but one excuse for him,” he said. “The man is mad.” Those words told me all. I knew the worst; and, knowing it, I could read the letter. It ran thus: “MY BELOVED VALERIA--When you read these lines you read my farewell words. I return to my solitary unfriended life--my life before I knew you. “My darling, you have been cruelly treated. You have been entrapped into marrying a man who has been publicly accused of poisoning his first wife--and who has not been honorably and completely acquitted of the charge. And you know it! “Can you live on terms of mutual confidence and mutual esteem with me when I have committed this fraud, and when I stand toward you in this position? It was possible for you to live with me happily while you were in ignorance of the truth. It is _not_ possible, now you know all.