For mercy's sake, for God's sake,
speak--tell me what it is!" cried the unhappy lady. "Oh, ma'am, it is--it is about the master," sobbed the girl. "Why he can't--he has not--oh, merciful God! He has not hurt himself,"
she almost screamed. "No, ma'am, no; not himself; no, no, but--" and again she hesitated. "But what? Speak out, Willett; dear Willett have mercy on me, and speak
out," cried her wretched mistress. "Oh, ma'am, don't be fretted; don't take it to heart, ma'am," said the
maid, clasping her hands together in anguish. "Anything, anything, Willett; only speak at once," she answered. "Well, ma'am, it is soon said--it is easy told. The master, ma'am--the
master is gone with the Frenchwoman; they went in the traveling coach
last night, ma'am; he is gone away with her, ma'am; that is all." Mrs. Marston looked at the girl with a gaze of stupefied, stony terror;
not a muscle of her face moved; not one heaving respiration showed that
she was living. Motionless, with this fearful look fixed upon the girl,
and her thin hands stretched towards her, she remained, second after
second. At last her outstretched hands began to tremble more and more
violently; and as if for the first time the knowledge of this calamity had
reached her, with a cry, as though body and soul were parting, she fell
back motionless in her bed. Several hours had passed before Mrs. Marston was restored to
consciousness. To this state of utter insensibility, one of silent,
terrified stupor succeeded; and it was not until she saw her daughter
Rhoda standing at her bedside, weeping, that she found voice and
recollection to speak. "My child; my darling, my poor child," she cried, sobbing piteously, as
she drew her to her heart and looked in her face alternately--"my
darling, my darling child!" Rhoda could only weep, and return her poor mother's caresses in silence. Too young and inexperienced to understand the full extent and nature of
this direful calamity, the strange occurrence, the general and apparent
consternation of the whole household, and the spectacle of her mother's
agony, had filled her with fear, perplexity, and anguish. Scared and
stunned with a vague sense of danger, like a young bird that, for the
first time, cowers under a thunderstorm, she nestled in her mother's
bosom; there, with a sense of protection, and of boundless love and
tenderness, she lay frightened, wondering, and weeping. Two or three days passed, and Dr. Danvers came and sate for several hours
with poor Mrs. Marston. To comfort and console were, of course, out of
his power. The nature of the bereavement, far more terrible than
death--its recent occurrence--the distracting consciousness of all its
complicated consequences--rendered this a hopeless task. She bowed
herself under the blow with the submission of a broken heart. The hope to
which she had clung for years had vanished; the worst that ever her
imagination feared had come in earnest. One idea was now constantly present in her mind. She felt a sad, but
immovable assurance, that she should not live long, and the thought,
"what will become of my darling when I am gone; who will guard and love
my child when I am in my grave; to whom is she to look for tenderness
and protection then?" perpetually haunted her, and superadded the pangs
of a still wilder despair to the desolation of a broken heart. It was not for more than a week after this event, that 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. "RICHARD MARSTON"

The reader can easily conceive the feelings with which this letter was
perused. We shall not attempt to describe them; nor shall we weary his
patience by a detail of all the circumstances attending Mrs. Marston's
departure. Suffice it to mention that, in less than a fortnight after the
receipt of the letter which we have just copied, she had forever left the
mansion of Gray Forest. In a small house, in a sequestered part of the rich county of Warwick,
the residence of Mrs. Marston and her daughter was for the present fixed. And there, for a time, the heart-broken and desolate lady enjoyed, at
least, the privilege of an immunity from the intrusions of all external
trouble. But the blow, under which the feeble remains of her health and
strength were gradually to sink, had struck too surely home; and, from
month to month--almost from week to week--the progress of decay was
perceptible.