unciation.

A week later when Douglass had regained full consciousness he was
informed that Mr. and Mrs. Brevoort had returned to New York. He felt
not a little hurt at her unceremonious departure without a word of
farewell to him and was inclined to be morose and splenetic during the
succeeding fortnight of convalescence. From Red McVey he had learned of
Grace's departure on the day of his mishap, and was much relieved to
know that she was probably unaware of his injury at the time of leaving,
it being very doubtful if she had even heard of it up to the present
time; her foreign address being unknown to any of her western friends,
there had been no interchange of correspondence, and local happenings of
this nature were not of sufficient Interest to the eastern public to
receive insertion in the New York papers. At least that is what he
thought, forgetting that a robbery of the mails is an item of universal
interest and also overlooking the fact that he was now a millionaire,
whose attempted assassination by a ringleader of the desperadoes had
been the welcome justification for glaring scare-heads in all the
metropolitan dailies. It would have cut him to the quick had she been
cognizant of his trouble and evinced no interest. He was also cynically
resentful of Constance's apparent defection, ungenerously attributing it
to her fear of being compromised.

Imagine his contrition when Ballard one day sought him out and
delivered unto him an envelope addressed in Constance's familiar dainty
chirography, admitting its detention for over three weeks by her express
command.

"I was not to give it to you until you were fairly off the puny list,"
said the marshal gravely, "and there is something else that you should
know before you read that letter."

And he proceeded to relate without any embellishment the facts in the
matter of Matlock's taking off, supplementing them with other details of
interest to the man who sat for hours after his friend had gone in
bitter self-communion. It was quite dark when he went supperless to his
room and opened the cream-tinted envelope.

The hours came and passed unrecked, and the gray dawn found him still
sitting by the rickety little table, head in hands, poring dully over
the lines that to his disordered fancy seemed written in her heart's
blood.

"I am going away to-morrow, out into the pitiful Nothing in which
all things end; and soon I will be even less than a memory to you