and read it. The letter told me that I was deserted, disgraced,
ruined. The woman with the fiery face and the impudent eyes was
Van Brandt's lawful wife. She had given him his choice of going
away with her at once or of being prosecuted for bigamy. He had
gone away with her--gone, and left me.

"Remember, sir, that I had lost both father and mother. I had no
friends. I was alone in the world, without a creature near to
comfort or advise me. And please to bear in mind that I have a
temper which feels even the smallest slights and injuries very
keenly. Do you wonder at what I had it in my thoughts to do that
evening on the bridge?

"Mind this: I believe I should never have attempted to destroy
myself if I could only have burst out crying. No tears came to
me. A dull, stunned feeling took hold like a vise on my head and
on my heart. I walked straight to the river. I said to myself,
quite calmly, as I went along, '_There_ is the end of it, and the
sooner the better.'

"What happened after that, you know as well as I do. I may get on
to the next morning--the morning when I so ungratefully left you
at the inn by the river-side.

"I had but one reason, sir, for going away by the first
conveyance that I could find to take me, and this was the fear
that Van Brandt might discover me if I remained in Perthshire.
The letter that he had left on the table was full of expressions
of love and remorse, to say nothing of excuses for his infamous
behavior to me. He declared that he had been entrapped into a
private marriage with a profligate woman when he was little more
than a lad. They had long since separated by common consent. When
he first courted me, he had every reason to believe that she was
dead. How he had been deceived in this particular, and how she
had discovered that he had married me, he had yet to find out.
Knowing her furious temper, he had gone away with her, as the one
means of preventing an application to the justices and a scandal
in the neighborhood. In a day or two he would purchase his
release from her by an addition to the allowance which she had
already received from him: he would return to me and take me
abroad, out of the way of further annoyance. I was his wife in
the sight of Heaven; I was the only woman he had ever loved; and
so on, and so on.

"Do you now see, sir, the risk that I ran of his discovering me
if I remained in your neighborhood? The bare thought of it made
my flesh creep. I was determined never again to see the man who
had so cruelly deceived me. I am in the same mind still--with
this difference, that I might consent to see him, if I could be
positively assured first of the death of his wife. That is not
likely to happen. Let me get on with my letter, and tell you what
I did on my arrival in Edinburgh.

"The coachman recommended me to the house in the Canongate where
you found me lodging. I wrote the same day to relatives of my
father, living in Glasgow, to tell them where I was, and in what
a forlorn position I found myself.

"I was answered by return of post. The head of the family and his
wife requested me to refrain from visiting them in Glasgow. They
had business then in hand which would take them to Edinburgh, and
I might expect to see them both with the least possible delay.

"They arrived, as they had promised, and they expressed
themselves civilly enough. Moreover, they did certainly lend me a
small sum of money when they found how poorly my purse was
furnished. But I don't think either husband or wife felt much for
me. They recommended me, at parting, to apply to my father's
other relatives, living in England. I may be doing them an
injustice, but I fancy they were eager to get me (as the common
phrase is) off their hands.

"The day when the departure of my relatives left me friendless
was also the day, sir, when I had that dream or vision of you
which I have already related. I lingered on at the house in the
Canongate, partly because the landlady was kind to me, partly
because I was so depressed by my position that I really did not
know what to do next.

"In this wretched condition you discovered me on that favorite
walk of mine from Holyrood to Saint Anthony's Well. Believe me,
your kind interest in my fortunes has not been thrown away on an
ungrateful woman. I could ask Providence for no greater blessing
than to find a brother and a friend in you. You have yourself
destroyed that hope by what you said and did when we were
together in the parlor. I don't blame you: I am afraid my manner
(without my knowing it) might have seemed to give you some
encouragement. I am only sorry--very, very sorry--to have no
honorable choice left but never to see you again.

"After much thin king, I have made up my mind to speak to those
other relatives of my father to whom I have not yet applied. The
chance that they may help me to earn an honest living is the one
chance that I have left. God bless you, Mr. Germaine! I wish you
prosperity and happiness from the bottom of my heart; and remain,
your grateful servant,

"M. VAN BRANDT.

"P.S.--I sign my own name (or the name which I once thought was


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