Speyer shook his head. Indeed, the letters, if genuine, would have been amply sufficient to place their writer in Morton's power. The latter at once took the necessary measures to gain the prisoner's release. Speyer no sooner found himself at liberty than he hastened to search out the fair object of his anxieties, promising to meet Morton on the steamboat for Boston in the afternoon. His doubts were strong whether the other would keep faith with him; but he amply consoled himself with the thought that, at the worst, he still had means to bring Vinal to terms. CHAPTER LIX. What spectre can the charnel send So dreadful as an injured friend?--_Rokeby_. "Strange," thought Vinal, "that I hear nothing from him." It was three days since he had written to Speyer; and his chief anxiety was, lest his note should have miscarried. Pain and long confinement had wrought heavily upon him. Every emotion, every care, thrilled with a morbid keenness upon his brain and nerves; but hitherto he had ruled his sensitive organism with an iron self-control, and calmed its perturbations with a fortitude which in a better man would have been heroic. His wife was in the room, and, as his eye rested on her, it kindled with a kind of troubled delight, for he loved her strongly, after his fashion. He had remarked of late a singular assiduity and tenderness in her devotion to him. Her position, in fact, was not unlike that of one who, broken and overborne by some irreparable sorrow, had renounced the world and its happiness, to embrace a new life, and build up for herself a new hope in the calm sanctuary of a convent. In the same spirit, Edith Leslie, bidding farewell to her girlish dream of life, its morning rose tint, and cloud draperies of gold and purple, gave herself to the practical duties before her, and sought, in their devoted fulfilment, to strengthen herself against the flood which for a time had overwhelmed her. Vinal, who, acute as he was, could not understand the state of mind from which her peculiar kindness of manner towards him rose, pleased himself with the idea that his rival's return was not so great a shock to her as he had at first feared, and that, after all, she was more fond of him than of Morton. This notion consoled his disturbed thoughts not a little. Still he was abundantly anxious and harassed. "If Morton should suspect! He has not come to see me; but that is natural enough, under the circumstances. And if he does suspect, he can have no proof. No one here suspects me. They say it was strange that my European correspondent should have made such a mistake; but that is all. No one dreams that I had a hand in it; and why should they? No one knew of Edith's engagement to him, except herself, her father, and her confidantes. I suppose she has confidantes--all girls have them. I wish their epitaphs were written, whoever they are. Well, 'Come what come may, Time and the hour run through the roughest day.'