ened her desk, and gave me two letters from my father to her.
They were, as she described them, repentant, and spoke most honourably
and most fondly of my deceased mother--praying Mrs Causand most
earnestly to tell him of the happiness and the whereabouts of his wife.

"And you did, of course."

"No, Ralph, I did not--look at the dates. It was a fortnight after
these arrived before I returned home. I weep even now when I think of
it--three days before I returned your mother had died, almost suddenly."

"Ah, true, true!" said I, mournfully. But, a sudden pang of agony
seizing my inmost heart, I suddenly started up, and, seizing her roughly
by the hand, I said, sternly:

"Look me in the face, Madam--do you see any resemblance there to my
poor, poor mother?"

"Oh, very, very great--but why this violence?"

"Because I now understand the villainy that caused her death. Your son
murdered her--see in me her reproachful countenance--oh, Mrs Causand,
you and yours have been the bane, the ruin of me and mine."

"What do you mean by those horrible words? Ralph, beware, or you will
yourself commit a dastardly murder upon me, even as you stand there."

"Mrs Causand, I will be calm. I see it all. With the first letter of
Sir Reginald in his hand, he went to Stickenham; and, with the murderous
intent strong in his black bosom, he branded my mother with bigamy,
incensed the weak Frenchman against her, and, in twenty-four hours, did
the mortal work that years of injustice and injury could not effect."

"Good God, it must be so!--Ralph, I do not ask you to forgive him--but
pity his poor suffering mother--he has broken my heart--not, Ralph, in
the mystical, but in the actual, the physical sense. In the very hour
in which I returned home, I found a warrant had been issued for his
apprehension as a housebreaker; and the stony-hearted reprobate had the
cruelty to insult his mother by a letter glorying in the fact, at the
same time demanding a thousand pounds for his secrecy and the papers
that he had stolen. The shock was too much for me. I had an attack, a
fit--I know not what--I fell senseless to the earth--my heart has never
since beaten healthfully. Oh, perhaps, after all, it would be a
happiness for me to die!--Poor Elizabeth--my more than sister, my
friend!"

"But why do I waste my time here?" said I, starting up, and seizing my
hat. "The reptile is at work. Where lives Sir Reginald?--my demon--
like double may