He stood staring with frightened eyes at the white envelope, with its
large black letters formed in Una's crude handwriting, dreading to
touch it, for a swift instinct told him the truth.
She had left him, he felt quite sure--left him almost in the very hour
when the discovery of their mutual love for each other had paved the
way to their wedded happiness. Mme. Lorraine, like the serpent crawling
into Eden, had brought woe and pain where love and joy had reigned.
All this flashed over him instinctively as he took the letter in his
hand and tore it open, devouring in fierce haste the brief, sad note
Una had written such a little while ago that the ink was scarcely dry
upon the page.
"This is my farewell to you, Eliot," it said. "I have learned the
secret of my identity. Forgive me that I shrink from revealing it
to you. I can only say that it comes between us, and divides us as
effectually as the grave itself. I have left you forever. Do not seek
to trace me, for nothing can ever induce me to live with you again.
Give up the thought of me and obtain a divorce (it will be easy, for,
thank Heaven, I have never been your wife, save in name only), then
you can marry Ida Hayes, whom you loved before you ever saw me. God
bless you for all your goodness to me. If you had known who I was
that time in New Orleans, you need not have sacrificed yourself for
my sake. God bless my--yes, I will presume to call them sisters this
once--Maud and Edith! I have left them the jewels they wore to-night
in memory of Una, to whom they were so kind. Forget me, Eliot, as
soon as you can, for I am all unworthy of your name and your love.
"LITTLE NOBODY."
She had deliberately signed the name she hated so much, and he knew
that her humility must have been great to drive her to such an act.
With a groan he sunk into a chair and buried his face in his hands.
"How could she, with her beauty and innocence, her high-bred air and
noble soul, be lowly, even shamefully born, as this letter would have
me believe?" he exclaimed. "No, no; it is only another of that wicked
woman's falsehoods. She has taken Una with her, out of hatred for my
darling and envy of our happiness. There can be nothing strong enough
to come between us, my little love and I. Oh, why did I leave them
alone together? I might have known that serpent's wiles. But I will
follow and bring them back! Fortunately it is not too late."
But he was mistaken, for when he reached madame's hotel, half an hour
later, he was told that she had left Boston by the 1:30 train.
"Just thirty minutes too late!" he muttered, wildly, and the sleepy
night-clerk of the hotel looked at him in contemptuous amazement. He
thought he must be some demented admirer of Mme. Leonie.
Eliot knew that madame's next engagement was in Philadelphia, and he
determined that he would follow by the next train.
"Will she have the temerity to take Una with her, or will she try to
hide her from me? The latter, most likely," he thought, sadly, and a
presentiment grew upon him that his lovely girl-wife was lost to him
forever.
But he followed the actress by the next train to Philadelphia, only to
learn that she had never arrived there. At a heavy cost, she had made
her manager cancel her engagement, and neither herself nor the manager
could be found there, nor a clew obtained to their whereabouts.
Just as suddenly as she had returned to the stage, she disappeared from
it, and the mystery of her disappearance was the topic of newspaper
paragraphs for some days.
Only one of the journalistic fraternity had any idea of the cause of
her flight, and he was too proud and bitter to give it to the world.
To his own family, under strict bonds of secrecy, he confided the
truth, and Maud and Edith were indignant at the thought that wicked
Mme. Lorraine had dared come beneath their roof, and loud in their
protestations of disbelief in the story that there was a stain on Una's
birth.
But Bryant, Sylvie, and Ida preserved a significant silence that told
more plainly than words their belief that all had happened for the
best. They hoped secretly that Eliot would get a divorce, as Una had
told him to do.