In the strange country whither Millicent had gone, Holworthy was the only link which bound her to her home, the one being who understood and cared for her. The dominion which he had always held over her was now strengthened into a powerful magnetic force. The little journal told how that influence had been exerted in compelling her to a secret marriage against her own will and judgment. She had been tricked into an elopement,--it might better be called an abduction,--and all unwillingly became his wife. Then all too soon, ere a week had passed, came the terrible discovery that the marriage was no marriage. For then came to her the mother of the man whom she was striving to love with wifely duty, an old woman, bowed with grief and years. She had come very far, across half a continent, to break to the girl whose name she had heard linked with that of her only son, the news that he was not free to marry, that she must give him up. When the tall girl with the childish, flower face fell stricken to the earth like a broken lily, at the feet of the older woman, she had made no cry; in the hours that followed, she said no word. When the man who had wrecked her life came and knelt beside her, prayed her to be patient and her wrongs should be righted, spoke of his remorse, told her of his terrible mad wife from whom the law would set him free, and make him really hers, prayed, besought, and worshipped at her feet, she answered him with one terrible word only. She rose and stood before him white and cruel in her agony, relentless as Fate. "Go!" was the one syllable which her frozen lips uttered; and with a gesture of command, majestic and beautiful, she had banished him from her presence. The secret was kept, even from the old woman, grown more sorrowful at the sight of the girl’s dumb agony and of her son’s grief, which she could not soothe. The secret was kept; and that very night Millicent’s face, pale and clouded, shone out amidst a group of fair women who sat languidly chatting through the music of _Faust_ at the opera. He kept her secret, poor wretch, and shielded her as best he might, forcing her to speak to him and see him before others, that no sudden breaking of their relations might be remarked. Save in the world, she never saw him again. That one word of command was the last syllable which he ever heard her speak to him directly. Not without a struggle did he give her up, but she was implacable. She yielded to him, and played her part in the little comedy which the world thought it understood. The beautiful Miss Almsford had found Holworthy a pleasant admirer, but her delicate American beauty and her solid American fortune would certainly win her a higher place in the world than that of the wife of Mr. Edward Holworthy, her countryman and old friend.