“Yes—­that is the note.  And when I picked it up the wanton spirit of mischief inspired me with the wish to use it for the torment of Dr. Grimshaw, who was easily provoked to jealously!  Oh!  I never thought it would end so fatally!  I affected to lose the note, and left it in his way.  I saw him pick it up and read it.  I felt sure he thought—­as I intended he should think—­it was for me.  There were other circumstances also to lead him to the same conclusion.  He dropped the note where he had picked it up and pretended not to have seen it; afterwards I in the same way restored it to Marian.  To carry on my fatal jest, I went home in the carriage with Marian, to Old Field Cottage, which stands near the coast.  I left Marian there and set out to return to Luckenough—­laughing all the time, alas! to think that Dr. Grimshaw had gone to the coast to intercept what he supposed to be my meeting with Thurston!  Oh, God, I never thought such jests could be so dangerous!  Alas! alas! he met Marian Mayfield in the dark, and between the storm without and the storm within—­the blindness of night and the blindness of rage—­he stabbed her before he found out his mistake, and he rushed home with her innocent blood on his hands and clothing—­rushed home and into my presence, to reproach me as the cause of his crime, to fill my bosom with undying remorse, and then to die!  He had in the crisis of his passion, ruptured an artery and fell—­so that the blood found upon his hands and clothing was supposed to be his own.  No one knew the secret of his blood guiltiness but myself.  In my illness and delirium that followed I believe I dropped some words that made my aunt, Mrs. Waugh, and Mr. Cloudesley Mornington, suspect something; but I never betrayed my knowledge of the dead man’s unintentional crime, and would not do so now, but to save the innocent.  May I now sit down?”

No! the State’s Attorney wanted to take her in hand, and cross-examine her, which he began to do severely, unsparingly.  But as she had told the exact truth, though not in the clearest style, the more the lawyer sifted her testimony, the clearer and more evident its truthfulness and point became; until there seemed at length nothing to do but acquit the prisoner.  But courts of law are proverbially fussy, and now the State’s Attorney was doing his best to invalidate the testimony of the last witness.

Turn we from them to the veiled lady, where she sat in her obscure corner of the room, hearing all this.

Oh! who can conceive, far less portray the joy, the unspeakable joy that filled her heart nearly to breaking!  He was guiltless!  Thurston, her beloved, was guiltless in intention, as he was in deed! the thought of crime had not been near his heart! his long remorse had been occasioned by what he had unintentionally made her suffer.  He was all that he had lately appeared to the world! all that he had at first appeared to her!—­faithful, truthful, constant, noble, generous—­her heart was vindicated! her love was not the madness, the folly, the weakness that her intellectual nature had often stamped it to be!  Her love was vindicated, for he deserved it all!  Oh! joy unspeakable—­oh! joy insupportable!