"Edna, if you send me away from you now, you shall never look upon my face again in this world!"
Mournfully her tearful eyes sought his, but her voice was low and steady as she put out both hands, and said solemnly: "Farewell, dear friend. God grant that when next we see each other's faces they may be overshadowed by the shining, white plumes of our angel wings, in that city of God, 'where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.' 'Never again in this world,' ah! such words are dreary and funereal as the dull fall of clods on a coffin-lid; but so be it. Thank God! time brings us all to one inevitable tryst before the great white throne."
He took the hands, bowed his forehead upon them and groaned; then drew them to his lips and left her.
With a slow, weary step she turned and went up to her room and read Mr. Hammond's letter. It was long and kind, full of affection and wise counsel, but contained no allusion to Mr. Murray.
As she refolded it she saw a slip of paper which had fallen unnoticed on the carpet, and picking it up she read these words: "It grieves me to have to tell you that, after all, I fear St. Elmo will marry Estelle Harding. He does not love her, she can not influence him to redeem himself; his future looks hopeless indeed. Edna, my child! what have you done! Oh! what have you done!"
Her heart gave a sudden, wild bound, then a spasm seemed to seize it, and presently the fluttering ceased, her pulses stopped, and a chill darkness fell upon her.
Her head sank heavily on her chest, and when she recovered, her memory she felt an intolerable sensation of suffocation, and a sharp pain that seemed to stab the heart, whose throbs were slow and feeble.
She raised the window and leaned out panting for breath, and the freezing wind powdered her face with fine snowflakes, and sprinkled its fairy flower-crystals over her hair.
The outer world was chill and dreary, the leafless limbs of the trees in the park looked ghostly and weird against the dense dun clouds which seemed to stretch like a smoke mantle just above the sea of roofs; and, dimly seen through the white mist, Brooklyn's heights and Staten's hills were huge outlines monstrous as Echidna.
Physical pain blanched Edna's lips, and she pressed her hand repeatedly to her heart, wondering what caused those keen pangs. At last, when the bodily suffering passed away, and she sat down exhausted, her mind reverted to the sentence in Mr. Hammond's letter.