She was fast, losing her health and strength; she could not eat nor
sleep; she was as one beside herself; frightful dreams, dread that knew
no words, fear that could not be destroyed, pursued her. She grew so
pale, so thin, so nervous, that Lord Atherton was alarmed about her.

If she had loved her husband less her despair would not have been so
great. Sooner than he should read those ill-considered words--those
protestations of love that made her face flush with flame--sooner than
he should read those she would die any death. For it had come to that;
she looked for death to save her. She felt powerless in the hands of a
villain who would never cease to persecute her.

She sent no answer to the letter. What could she say? She made one or
two despairing efforts to get the money, found it impossible, then gave
herself up for lost.

She did not write, but there came another note from him saying that
unless he heard from her that the money was coming he would wait upon
her husband on Friday morning and tell him all.

There was no further respite for her--the sword had fallen--she could
not live and face it; she could not live knowing that her husband was to
read those words of her folly, that he was to know all the deceit, the
clandestine correspondence that weighed now so bear it.

"I shall never look in his face again," she said to herself. "I could
never bear that he should see me after he knows that."

She weighed it well in her mind. She looked at it in every way, but the
more she thought of it the more impossible it seemed. She could not