Ah! how her tortured heart writhed and bled; how piteously it pleaded for him, and for itself!
Edna opened the locket, and if Gertrude had stepped into the golden frame, the likeness could not have been more startling. She looked at it until her lips blanched and were tightly compressed, and the memory of Gertrude became paramount. Murray Hammond's face she barely glanced at, and its extraordinary beauty stared at her like that of some avenging angel. With a shudder she put it away, and turned to the letters that St. Elmo had written to Agnes and to Murray, in the early, happy days of his engagement.
Tender, beautiful, loving letters, that breathed the most devoted attachment and the purest piety; letters that were full of lofty aspirations, and religious fervor, and generous schemes for the assistance and enlightenment of the poor about Le Bocage; and especially for "my noble, matchless Murray." Among the papers were several designs for charitable buildings: a house of industry, an asylum for the blind, and a free school-house. In an exquisite ivory casket, containing a splendid set of diamonds, and the costly betrothal ring, bearing the initials, Edna found a sheet of paper around which the blazing necklace was twisted. Disengaging it. she saw that it was a narration of all that had stung him to desperation on the night of the murder.
As she read the burning taunts, the insults, the ridicule heaped by the two under the apple-tree upon the fond, faithful, generous, absent friend, she felt the indignant blood gush into her face; but she read on and on, and two hours elapsed ere she finished the package. Then came a trial, a long, fierce, agonizing trial, such as few women have ever been called upon to pass through; such as the world believes no woman ever triumphantly endured. Girded by prayer, the girl went down resolutely into the flames of the furnace, and the ordeal was terrible indeed. But as often as Love showed her the figure of Mr. Murray, alone in his dreary sitting-room, waiting, watching for her, she turned and asked of Duty, the portrait of Gertrude's sweet, anxious face; the picture of dying Annie; the mournful countenance of a man, shut up by iron bars from God's beautiful world, from the home and the family who had fondly cherished her in her happy girlhood, ere St. Elmo trailed his poison across her sunny path.
After another hour, the orphan went to her desk, and while she wrote, a pale, cold rigidity settled upon her features, which told that she was calmly, deliberately shaking hands with the expelled, the departing Hagar of her heart's hope and happiness. "To the mercy of God, and the love of Christ, and the judgment of your own conscience, I commit you. Henceforth we walk different paths, and after to-night, it is my wish that we meet no more on earth. Mr. Murray, I cannot lift up your darkened soul; and you would only drag mine down. For your final salvation I shall never cease to pray till we stand face to face before the Bar of God. "EDNA EARL."