“The statement that I enclose, however, will—­in case you do not already know them—­tell you all the details of what has happened since you left me more than a year ago.  From it you will learn how cruelly I was deceived into marrying George Caresfoot, believing you dead.  Oh, through all eternity, never shall I forget that fearful night, nor cease to thank God for my merciful escape from the fiend whom I had married.  And then came the morning, and brought you—­the dead—­alive before my eyes.  And whilst I stood in the first tumult of my amaze—­ forgetful of everything but that it was you, my own, my beloved Arthur, no spirit, but you in flesh and blood—­whilst I yet stood thus, stricken to silence by the shock of an unutterable joy—­you broke upon me with those dreadful words, so that I choked, feeling how just they must seem to you, and could not answer.

“And yet it sometimes fills me with wonder and indignation to think of them; wonder that you could believe me so mad as to throw away the love of my life, and indignation that you could deem me so lost as to dishonour it.  They drove me mad, those words, and from that moment forward I remember nothing but a chaos of the mind heaving endlessly like the sea.  But all this has passed, and I am thankful to say that I am quite well again now.

“Still I should not have written to you, Arthur; I did not even know where you were, and I never thought of recovering you.  After what has passed, I looked upon you as altogether lost to me for this world.  But a few days ago I went at her own request to see Lady Bellamy.  All she said to me I will not now repeat, lest I should render this letter too wearisome to read, though a great deal of it was strange enough to be well worth repetition.  In the upshot, however, she said that I had better write to you, and told me where to write.  And so I write to you, dear.  There was also another thing that she told me of sad import for myself, but which I must not shrink to face.  She said that there lived at Madeira, where you are, a lady who is in love with you, and is herself both beautiful and wealthy, to whom you would have gone for comfort in your trouble, and in all probability have married.

“Now, Arthur, I do not know if this is the case, but, if so, I hasten to say that I do not blame you.  You smarted under what must have seemed to you an intolerable wrong, and you went for consolation to her who had it to offer.  In a man that is perhaps natural, though it is not a woman’s way.  If it be so, I say from my heart, be as happy as you can.  But remember what I told you long ago, and do not fall into any delusions on the matter; do not imagine because circumstances have shaped themselves thus, therefore I am to be put out of your mind and forgotten, for this is not so.  I cannot be forgotten, though for a while I may be justly discarded; it is possible that for this world you have passed out of my reach, but in the next I shall claim you as my own.