"Make your mind easy," he answered.
"Nothing has gone wrong."

"Is no accident likely to happen between this
and Monday?"

"None whatever. The marriage is a
certainty."

"A certainty?"

"Yes."

"Good night."

She put her hand out through the door. He
took it with some little surprise: it was not
often in his experience that she gave him her
hand of her own accord.

"You have sat up too long," he said, as he
felt the clasp of her cold fingers. " I am afraid
you will have a bad night—I'm afraid you will
not sleep."

She softly closed the door.

"I shall sleep," she said, " sounder than you
think for."

It was past two o'clock when she shut herself
up alone in her room. Her chair stood in its
customary place by the toilette-table. She sat
down for a few minutes thoughtfully—then
opened her letter to Norah, and turned to the
end, where the blank space was left. The last
lines written above the space ran thus: . . .
"I have laid my whole heart bare to you; I have
hidden nothing. It has come to this. The end
I have toiled for, at such terrible cost to myself,
is an end which I must reach, or die. It is
wickedness, madness, what you will—but it is so.
There are now two journeys before me to choose
between. If I can marry him—the journey to
the church. If the profanation of myself is more
than I can bear—the journey to the grave!"

Under that last sentence, she wrote these
lines:—

"My choice is made. If the cruel law will let
you, lay me with my father and mother, in the
churchyard at home. Farewell, my love! Be
always innocent; be always happy. If Frank
ever asks about me, say 1 died forgiving him.
Don't grieve long for me, Norah—I am not
worth it."

She sealed the letter, and addressed it to her
sister. The tears gathered in her eyes as she
laid it on the table. She waited until her sight
was clear again, and then took the bank-notes
once more from the little bag in her bosom.
After wrapping them in a sheet of note-paper,
she wrote Captain Wragge's name on the enclosure,
and added these words below it: " Lock
the door of my room, and leave me till my sister
comes. The money I promised you is in this.
You are not to blame; it is my fault, and mine
only. If you have any friendly remembrance of
me, be kind to your wife for my sake."

After placing the enclosure by the letter to
Norah, she rose and looked round the room.
Some few little things in it were not in their
places. She set them in order, and drew the
curtains on either side, at the head of her bed.
Her own dress was the next object of her scrutiny.
It was all as neat, as pure, as prettily arranged
as ever. Nothing about her was disordered, but
her hair. Some tresses had fallen loose on one
side of her head; she carefully put them back in
their places, with the help of her glass. " How
pale I look!" she thought, with a faint smile.
"Shall I be paler still, when they find me in the
morning?"

She went straight to the place where the
laudanum was hidden, and took it out. The
bottle was so small, that it lay easily in the palm
of her hand. She let it remain there for a little
while, and stood looking at it.

"DEATH!" she said. " In this drop of brown
drink—DEATH!"

As the words passed her lips, an agony of
unutterable horror seized on her in an instant. She
crossed the room unsteadily, with a maddening
confusion in her head, with a suffocating anguish
at her heart. She caught at the table to support
herself. The faint clink of the bottle, as it fell
harmlessly from her loosened grasp, and rolled
against some porcelain object on the table, struck
through her brain like the stroke of a knife. The
sound of her own voice, sunk to a whisper—her
voice only uttering that one word, Death—rushed
in her ears like the rushing of a wind. She
dragged herself to the bedside, and rested her
head against it, sitting on the floor. " Oh, my
life! my life!" she thought; "what is my life
worth, that I cling to it like this?"

An interval passed, and she felt her strength
returning. She raised herself on her knees, and
hid her face on the bed. She tried to pray—to
pray to be forgiven for seeking the refuge of
death. Frantic words burst from her lips—
words which would have risen to cries, if
she had not stifled them in the bedclothes. She
started to her feet; despair strengthened her
with a headlong fury against herself. In one
moment, she was back at the table; in another,
the poison was once more in her hand.

She removed the cork, and lifted the bottle to
her mouth.

At the first cold touch of the glass on her lips,
her strong young life leapt up in her leaping
blood, and fought with the whole frenzy of its
loathing against the close terror of Death. Every
active power in the exuberant vital force that
was in her, rose in revolt against the destruction
which her own will would fain have wreaked on
her own life. She paused: for the second time,
she paused in spite of herself. There, in the
glorious perfection of her youth and health—
there, trembling on the verge of human existence,
she stood; with the kiss of the Destroyer close
at her lips, and Nature, faithful to its sacred
trust, fighting for the salvation of her to the
last.

No word passed her lips. Her cheeks flushed
deep; her breath came thick and fast. With the
poison still in her hand, with the sense that she
might faint in another moment, she made for
the window, and threw back the curtain that
covered it.