fears and hopes. Mr. Tamworth
has been gone a month, and I have heard nothing from him. This is all
the more difficult to bear that Dr. Kenyon also has left me, thus
taking from my house all in whom I can confide or to whom I can talk.
For I will not place confidence in servants, and there are no guests
here at present upon whose judgment I can rely concerning even a lesser
matter than this which occupies all my thoughts.

I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of these lines, and declare
on paper what I have said a thousand times to myself--what a mystery
this whole matter is, and how little probability there is of our ever
understanding it! Why was it that Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one woman
so well that he was willing to risk his life to gain her, would subject
himself to the terrors which must follow any crime, no matter how
secretly performed, by marrying a woman he must kill in twenty-four
hours? Marriages are not compulsory in this country, and any one must
acknowledge that it would be easier for a strong man--and he certainly
was no weakling--to refuse a woman at the nuptial altar than to
undertake and carry out a scheme so full of revolting details and
involving so much risk as this which we have been forced to ascribe to
him.

Then the woman, the unknown and fearful creature who had allowed herself
to be boxed up and carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just for
the purpose of assuming a position which she seemingly might have
obtained in ways much less repulsive and dangerous! Was it in human
nature to go through such an ordeal, and if it were, what could the
circumstances have been that would drive even the most insensible nature
into such an adventure! I question, and try to answer my own inquiries,
but my imagination falters over the task, and I am no nearer to the
satisfaction of my doubts than I was in the harrowing minute when the
knowledge of this tragedy first flashed upon me.

I must have patience. Mr. Tamworth must write to me soon.

AUGUST 10, 1791.

News, news, and such news! How could I ever have dreamed of it! But let
me transcribe Mr. Tamworth's letter:

To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,
Mistress of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:

RESPECTED MADAM: After a lengthy delay,
occupied in researches, made doubly difficult
by the changes which have been wrought in the
country by the late conflict, I have just come
upon a f