ed away.

Why did not the woman speak? How scared she looked, too! He was brushing
past her, and up the stairs, when she told him, in faltering tones, that
her mistress was gone.

The word coursed through his veins like poison. "Gone! how gone?" he
said. Could it be possible that his mother was dead?

"Gone away," said Dinah.

"Away! Where?"

"Gone by train, sir, this afternoon."

"Gone by train," Paul repeated, mechanically, with absent manner.

"There's a letter left, sir; it's on the table in her room."

Recovering his self-possession, Paul darted upstairs at three steps a
stride. His mother's room was empty; no fire in the grate; the pictures
down from the walls; the table coverless; the few books gone from the
shelf; all chill, voiceless, and blind.

What did it mean? Paul stood an instant on the threshold, seeing all in
one swift glance, yet seeing nothing. Then, with the first return of
present consciousness, his eye fell on the letter that lay on the table.
He took it up with trembling fingers. It was addressed in his mother's
hand to him. He broke the seal. This is what he read:

"I go to-day to the shelter of the Catholic Church. I had long
thought to return to this refuge, though I had hoped to wait until
the day your happiness with Greta was complete. That, in Heaven's
purposes, was not to be, and I must leave you without a last
farewell. Good-bye, dear son, and God bless and guide you. If you
love me, do not grieve for me. It is from love of you I leave you.
Think of me as one who is at peace, and I will bless you even in
heaven. If ever the world should mock you with your mother's name,
remember that she is your mother still, and that she loved you to
the last. Good-bye, dear Paul; you may never know the day when this
erring and sorrowing heart will be allowed, in His infinite pity, to
join the choirs above. Then, dearest, from the hour when you read
this letter, think of me as dead, for I shall be dead to the world."

Paul held the letter before him, and looked at it long with vacant eyes.
Feeling itself seemed gone. Not a tear came from him, not a sigh, not
one moan of an overwrought heart escaped him. All was blind, pulseless
torpor. He stood there crushed and overwhelmed, a shaken, shattered man.
A thousand horrors congealed within him to one deep, dead stupor.

He turned away in silence, and walked out of the house. The empty
chambers seemed, as he