one day
Willett, with a certain air of anxious mystery, entered the silent and
darkened chamber where Mrs. Marston lay. She had a letter in her hand;
the seal and handwriting were Mr. Marston's. It was long before the
injured wife was able to open it; when she did so, the following
sentences met her eye:--

"Gertrude,

"You can be ignorant neither of the nature nor of the consequences of the
decisive step I have taken: I do not seek to excuse it. For the censure
of the world, its meddling and mouthing hypocrisy, I care absolutely
nothing; I have long set it at defiance. And you yourself, Gertrude, when
you deliberately reconsider the circumstances of estrangement and
coldness under which, though beneath the same roof, we have lived for
years, without either sympathy or confidence, can scarcely, if at all,
regret the rupture of a tie which had long ceased to be anything better
than an irksome and galling formality. I do not desire to attribute to
you the smallest blame. There was an incompatibility, not of temper but
of feelings, which made us strangers though calling one another man and
wife. Upon this fact I rest my own justification; our living together
under these circumstances was, I dare say, equally undesired by us both.
It was, in fact, but a deference to the formal hypocrisy of the world. At
all events, the irrevocable act which separates us forever is done, and I
have now merely to state so much of my intentions as may relate in
anywise to your future arrangements. I have written to your cousin, and
former guardian, Mr. Latimer, telling him how matters stand between us.
You, I told him, shall have, without opposition from me, the whole of
your own fortune to your own separate use, together with whatever shall
be mutually agreed upon as reasonable, from my income, for your support
and that of my daughter. It will be necessary to complete your
arrangements with expedition, as I purpose returning to Gray Forest in
about three weeks; and as, of course, a meeting between you and those by
whom I shall be accompanied is wholly out of the question, you will see
the expediency of losing no time in adjusting everything for yours and my
daughter's departure. In the details, of course, I shall not interfere. I
think I have made myself clearly intelligible, and would recommend your
communicating at once with Mr. Latimer, with a view to completing
temporary arrangements, until your final plans shall have been decided
upon