his lips: 'Will you undertake it? Can
you go through with it without shrinking and without fear?' And the
reply from hers: 'I will undertake it, and I can go through with it,'
followed by that assurance which struck me as being so inexplicable at
the time, and which, with all the light that this late horrible event
has thrown upon it, still preserves its mystery for me. 'I shall give
you nothing till I am dead, and then I will give you everything.' If the
conclusions I drew seemed wild, were they not warranted by these words?
Did she not speak of death, and did he not encourage her?

"If she were not dead--and sometimes this thought would cross my burning
brain--then she was with him, forced into the company of his unwilling
wife in that last interview which they must have held in his cottage. In
either case he was a villain and a coward, deserving of death; and death
he should have, and from the hand of him whom he had doubly outraged.

[Illustration]

"But as I rode out of town and came in sight of the river, I found
myself seized by terrifying thoughts. Should I have to ride by the place
where I could see them stooping with boat hooks and bending with
peering eyes over some snag they had brought up from the river bottom?
Could I endure to face this picture, then to pass it, then to ride on,
feeling it ever at my back, blackening the morning, destroying the
noontide, making more horrible the night? Could I go from this place
till I knew whether or not the sullen waters would yield up their
beautiful prey, and would my body proceed while my heart was on this
river bank, and my jealousy divided between the wretch who had urged her
on to death and these other men who might yet touch her unconscious form
and gaze upon her disfigured beauty? And the answer which welled up from
within me was, yes, I could go; I could pass that picture; I could feel
it glooming ever and ever upon me from behind my back, and never turn my
head;--such an impetus of hate was upon me, driving me forward after the
wretch fleeing in self-complacency and triumph into a future of wealth
and social consideration.

"But when I had done all this, when my too fleet horse had carried me
beyond sight of the city, and nature, with its irresistible beauty, had
begun to influence my understanding, other thoughts came trooping in
upon me, and a vision of Honora Dudleigh's face as she took the dagger
from my hands and an implied promise from my lips, rose