your father's death--_he_ told her, you see--and that completed her
despair. She took to drink worse and worse; she got out of all
bounds--sort of frantic, you see. Twice she tried to kill
herself--once by poison, once by drowning; and both times he--you know
who I mean--caught her and stopped her. He hadn't even mercy enough on
her, she says, to let her die!"

"For God's sake, don't tell me of those horrors!" my lady cried, in
agony. "I feel as though I were going mad."

"It is hard," said the artist, "but I can't help it--it's true, all the
same. She heard of your marriage to Sir Everard Kingsland next. It
was the last thing he ever taunted her with; for, crazed with his jeers
and insults, she fled from him that night, sold all she possessed but
the clothes on her back, and took passage for England."

"To see me?" asked Harriet, hoarsely.

"To see you, my lady, but all unknown. She had no wish to force
herself upon you; she only felt that she was dying, and that if she
could look on your face once before she went out of life, and see you
well, and beautiful, and beloved, and happy, she could lie down in the
dust at your gates and die content.

"She made me write you a line or two that night," continued Mr.
Parmalee--"that night which she thought her last--and she begged me to
find you and give it to you, with her picture. I have it yet; here
they are, both."

He drew from his pocket the picture and a note, and gave them into my
lady's hand.

"She didn't die," he resumed; "she got better, and I took her to
London, left her there, and came down here. Now, my lady, I don't make
no pretense of being better than I am; I took this matter up in the way
of speculation, in the view to make money out of it, and nothing else.
I said to myself: 'Here's this young lady, the bride of a rich baronet;
it ain't likely she's been and told him all this, and it ain't likely
her pa has died and left her ignorant of it. Now, what's to hinder my
making a few honest pounds out of it, at the same time I do a good turn
for this poor, sufferin'. sinful critter here? That's what I said, my
lady, and that's what I am here for. I'm a poor man, and I live by my
wits, and a stroke of business is a stroke of business, no matter how
far it's out of the ordinary run. Your husband don't know this here
story; you don't want him to know it, and you come down handsomely and
I'll keep your secret."

"You have rather spoiled your mark