f the letters from the wife to the husband. One
other, in Mrs. Manston's handwriting, and in the same packet, was
differently addressed.

'THREE TRANTERS INN, CARRIFORD,
November 28, 1864.

'DEAR COUSIN JAMES,--Thank you indeed for answering my letter so
promptly. When I called at the post-office yesterday I did not in the
least think there would be one. But I must leave this subject. I write
again at once under the strangest and saddest conditions it is possible
to conceive.

'I did not tell you in my last that I was a married woman. Don't blame
me--it was my husband's influence. I hardly know where to begin my
story. I had been living apart from him for a time--then he sent for me
(this was last week) and I was glad to go to him. Then this is what he
did. He promised to fetch me, and did not--leaving me to do the journey
alone. He promised to meet me at the station here--he did not. I went on
through the darkness to his house, and found his door locked and himself
away from home. I have been obliged to come here, and I write to you in
a strange room in a strange village inn! I choose the present moment to
write to drive away my misery. Sorrow seems a sort of pleasure when you
detail it on paper--poor pleasure though.

'But this is what I want to know--and I am ashamed to tell it. I would
gladly do as you say, and come to you as a housekeeper, but I have
not the money even for a steerage passage. James, do you want me badly
enough--do you pity me enough to send it? I could manage to subsist in
London upon the proceeds of my sale for another month or six weeks. Will
you send it to the same address at the post-office? But how do I know
that you...'

Thus the letter ended. From creases in the paper it was plain that the
writer, having got so far, had become dissatisfied with her production,
and had crumpled it in her hand. Was it to write another, or not to
write at all?

The next thing Anne Seaway perceived was that the fragmentary story she
had coaxed out of Manston, to the effect that his wife had left England
for America, might be truthful, according to two of these letters,
corroborated by the evidence of the railway-porter. And yet, at first,
he had sworn in a passion that his wife was most certainly consumed in
the fire.

If she had been burnt, this letter, written in her bedroom, and probably
thrust into her pocket whe