f she let another sun
rise upon her guilt.

"I did not stand there long between the wraiths of my murderous
ancestors. A message was shouted through the door--the message for
which my ears had been strained in dreadful anticipation for the
last two hours. A man named Pfeiffer wanted to see me before I
went down to be married. A man named Pfeiffer!

"I looked closely at the boy who delivered this message. He showed
no excitement, nor any feeling greater than impatience at being kept
waiting a minute or so at the door. Then I glanced beyond him, at
the people chatting in the hall. No alarm there; nothing but a very
natural surprise that the bride should keep so big a crowd waiting.
I felt that this fixed the event. He who had sent me this quiet
message was true to himself and to our old compact. He had not
published below what would have set the house in an uproar in a
moment. He had left his secret to be breathed into my ear alone.
I could recall the moment he passed me his word, and his firm look
as he said, with his hand lifted to Heaven 'You have been good to
me and given me your precious self while I was poor and a nobody.
In return, I swear to keep our marriage a secret till great success
shows me to be worthy of you or till you with your own lips express
forgiveness of my failure and grant me leave to speak. Nothing but
death or your permission shall ever unseal my lips.' When I heard
that he was dead I feared lest he might have spoken, but now that
I had seen him alive, I knew that in no other breast, save his, my
own and that of the unknown minister in an almost unknown town,
dwelt any knowledge of the fact which stood between me and the
marriage which all these people had come here to see. My confidence
in his rectitude determined me. Without conscious emotion, without
fear even,--the ending of suspense had ended all that,--I told
the boy to seat the gentleman in the library. Then "I am haunted
now, I am haunted always, by one vision, horrible but persistent.
It will not leave me; it rises between us now; it has stood between
us ever since I left that house with the seal of your affection on
my lips. Last night it terrified me into unconscious speech. I
dreamed that I saw again, and plainly, what I caught but a shadowy
glimpse of in that murderous hour: a man's form seated at the end
of the old settle, with his head leaning back, in silent
contemplation. His face was turned the other way--I t