He
is the property of a lady who loves him--the woman Paul Linmere was to
have married, if he had lived."

"I am glad. You may laugh at me, Louis, but the uncertain fate of Leo
has given me great unhappiness. But to continue--I engaged myself as
nursemaid with an English family, who had been traveling on the
continent, and were about returning home. I remained with them until
I had accumulated sufficient funds to defray my expenses across the
Atlantic, and then I set out on my journey. I came to New York, for
that had been Mr. Linmere's home before we went to France. I soon got
upon the track of him, and learned that he was about to be married to
a Miss Margaret Harrison, a young lady of great beauty, and with a large
fortune. I wanted to see her; for you must know that I had registered a
fearful vow of vengeance on Mr. Paul Linmere, and I desired to judge for
myself if it would fall heavily on the woman he was going to marry. For
even violently as I had loved him I now hated him.

"I saw Miss Harrison. I accosted her in the street, one day, as any
common beggar would have done, telling her a pitiful story of my poverty.
She smiled on me, spoke a few words of comfort, and laid a piece of gold
in my hand. Her sweet face charmed me. I set myself to find out if she
cared for the man she was to marry. It had all been arranged by her
father, years before, I understood, and I felt that her heart was not
interested.

"After learning that, nothing could have saved Paul Linmere. His fate was
decided. Twice I waylaid him in the streets, and showed him my pale face,
which was not unlike the face of the dead. And as he believed that I was
drowned, the sight of me filled him with the most abject terror. How I
enjoyed the poor wretch's cowardly horror!

"The night that he was to be married, I lay in wait for him at the place
where the brook crossed the highway. I had learned that he was to walk up
alone from the depot, to the house of his expectant bride, and there I
resolved to avenge my wrongs. I stepped before him as he came, laid my
cold hand on his arm, and bade him follow me. He obeyed, in the most
abject submission. He seemed to have no will of his own, but yielded
himself entirely to me. He shook like one with the ague, and his
footsteps faltered so that at times I had to drag him along. I took
him to the lonely graveyard, where sleep the Harrison dead, and--" She
covered her face with her hands and lapsed into silence.