ought it
would end so fatally! I affected to lose the note, and left it in his
way. I saw him pick it up and read it. I felt sure he thought--as I
intended he should think--it was for me. There were other circumstances
also to lead him to the same conclusion. He dropped the note where he
had picked it up and pretended not to have seen it; afterwards I in the
same way restored it to Marian. To carry on my fatal jest, I went home
in the carriage with Marian, to Old Field Cottage, which stands near the
coast. I left Marian there and set out to return to Luckenough--laughing
all the time, alas! to think that Dr. Grimshaw had gone to the coast to
intercept what he supposed to be my meeting with Thurston! Oh, God, I
never thought such jests could be so dangerous! Alas! alas! he met
Marian Mayfield in the dark, and between the storm without and the storm
within--the blindness of night and the blindness of rage--he stabbed her
before he found out his mistake, and he rushed home with her innocent
blood on his hands and clothing--rushed home and into my presence, to
reproach me as the cause of his crime, to fill my bosom with undying
remorse, and then to die! He had in the crisis of his passion, ruptured
an artery and fell--so that the blood found upon his hands and clothing
was supposed to be his own. No one knew the secret of his blood
guiltiness but myself. In my illness and delirium that followed I
believe I dropped some words that made my aunt, Mrs. Waugh, and Mr.
Cloudesley Mornington, suspect something; but I never betrayed my
knowledge of the dead man's unintentional crime, and would not do so
now, but to save the innocent. May I now sit down?"

No! the State's Attorney wanted to take her in hand, and cross-examine
her, which he began to do severely, unsparingly. But as she had told the
exact truth, though not in the clearest style, the more the lawyer
sifted her testimony, the clearer and more evident its truthfulness and
point became; until there seemed at length nothing to do but acquit the
prisoner. But courts of law are proverbially fussy, and now the State's
Attorney was doing his best to invalidate the testimony of the last
witness.

Turn we from them to the veiled lady, where she sat in her obscure
corner of the room, hearing all this.

Oh! who can conceive, far less portray the joy, the unspeakable joy that
filled her heart nearly to breaking! He was guiltless! Thurston, her
beloved, was guiltless in intention