, I only offer you a means of communicating with me.
For your sake, as well as for mine, this mu st not be. I must never give
you a second opportunity of saying that you love me; I must go away,
leaving no trace behind by which you can possibly discover me.

"But I cannot forget that I owe my poor life to your compassion and your
courage. You, who saved me, have a right to know what the provocation
was that drove me to drowning myself, and what my situation is, now that
I am (thanks to you) still a living woman. You shall hear my sad story,
sir; and I will try to tell it as briefly as possible.

"I was married, not very long since, to a Dutch gentleman, whose name
is Van Brandt. Please excuse my entering into family particulars. I have
endeavored to write and tell you about my dear lost father and my old
home. But the tears come into my eyes when I think of my happy past
life. I really cannot see the lines as I try to write them.

"Let me, then, only say that Mr. Van Brandt was well recommended to
my good father before I married. I have only now discovered that he
obtained these recommendations from his friends under a false pretense,
which it is needless to trouble you by mentioning in detail. Ignorant of
what he had done, I lived with him happily. I cannot truly declare that
he was the object of my first love, but he was the one person in the
world whom I had to look up to after my father's death. I esteemed him
and respected him, and, if I may say so without vanity, I did indeed
make him a good wife.

"So the time went on, sir, prosperously enough, until the evening came
when you and I met on the bridge.

"I was out alone in our garden, trimming the shrubs, when the
maid-servant came and told me there was a foreign lady in a carriage at
the door who desired to say a word to Mrs. Van Brandt. I sent the maid
on before to show her into the sitting-room, and I followed to receive
my visitor as soon as I had made myself tidy. She was a dreadful woman,
with a flushed, fiery face and impudent, bright eyes. 'Are you Mrs. Van
Brandt?' she said. I answered, 'Yes.' 'Are you really married to him?'
she asked me. That question (naturally enough, I think) upset my temper.
I said, 'How dare you doubt it?' She laughed in my face. 'Send for Van
Brandt,' she said. I went out into the passage and called him down from
the room upstairs in which he was writing. 'Ernest,' I said, 'here is
a person who has insulted me. Come down direct