Chapter LXI

Yes, Sweetheart had gone away from Verelands, where she had been so unutterably happy, and where such blighting sorrow and disgrace had fallen upon her life.

She had not waited to be thrust out-of-doors by the hands of her vindictive foe; she had gone herself, creeping forth with bowed head and unsteady steps at the earliest dawn of day. In her arms she carried her sleeping child; but she did not go to the river, as Camille ardently hoped she would; and the fear of such a tragedy was soon dissipated in Norman’s mind by the reception of a letter which Sweetheart had left for him with one of the servants--a letter scrawled in a trembling hand, barely like her own, so terrible was her agitation. Sweetheart had written it upon her knees, being so weak that she could not sit upright to pen the incoherent lines to the man of whom she was taking so bitter a farewell. In it she had inclosed her unfinished verses, and Norman read them through a mist of tears, the bitterest he had ever shed in his shadowed life.

“This is what I was writing, when she--your wife, whom we thought
dead--came back and set the seal of shame and despair on the
short story of my life:

“’Tis midnight, my darling, the house is so lonely--
All, all are asleep but me;
I waken to weep, ah, beloved, if only--
If only I were with thee!
But the swift hours are bearing thee further away,
The swift hours whose flight my poor heart can not stay;
Come back to me, darling, my eager heart cries,
And the bitter tears rush from my heart to my eyes.”

“You see, Norman, I was feeling very, very unhappy over your
absence. It must have been a presentiment of evil. When she first
said that she was your wife, I could not believe it. But when
Nurse Mary came home from the party, I told her all. She had seen
your wife when she lived at Verelands long ago. She went upstairs
and looked at the two women, and she came back to me weeping.
She had recognized them both. There was no longer any doubt, no
longer any hope for me.

“So I am going away, Norman, but do not add to your troubles
the fear lest I shall drown myself, as your wife advised me
to do. I am quite wretched enough to do it, but you will have
sorrow enough to bear without that. And I can not throw away my
life, because you saved it, and I hold it sacred to you. But you
will never see me again. I shall go far away with my child, and
live out my unhappy life in silence and obscurity. I have given
trouble enough to that poor creature upstairs. Be kind to her,
Norman, for the loss of your love seems to have driven her mad.

“Oh, how good you have been to me, Norman! She told me all. Even
in my babyhood it was my fate to come between your heart and
hers. How could she believe that cruel story, and you so noble
and so good? But it was her jealous nature. For me, I could not
see a fault in you if the whole world bore witness. I have loved
you and believed in you always. My heart went to you the first
time I saw you on that mysterious journey when you saved my life.
It never left you. It remains with you now, while I go out of
your life forever. May it be a talisman to guard you from all
evil.

“I have no fault to find with you, Norman, although you did not
marry me for love, but to shield me from a hideous slander. It
was very noble in you, and you carried out the farce of love so
well I never knew the difference. I shall try to cheat my heart
with the fancy that you did learn to love me a little--at least,
after Baby Alan came, of whom you were so proud, and now, alas!
poor little one.

“Farewell, Norman. Perhaps you may learn to forgive her and love
her again. I shall pray always for your happiness, but you must
forget poor

“SWEETHEART.”

“My God, I must find her! She can not go out of my life like this, my love--my wife in the sight of Heaven, whatever man’s laws may say to the contrary! Our child, our darling, puts a holier seal on our marriage--makes it more binding than the irksome time that bound me to that fiend Camille,” the stricken man raved aloud in his agony of despair.