It was not for more than a week after this event, that one day Willett, with a certain air of anxious mystery, entered the silent and darkened chamber where Mrs. Marston lay.  She had a letter in her hand; the seal and handwriting were Mr. Marston’s.  It was long before the injured wife was able to open it; when she did so, the following sentences met her eye:—­

“Gertrude,

“You can be ignorant neither of the nature nor of the consequences of the decisive step I have taken:  I do not seek to excuse it.  For the censure of the world, its meddling and mouthing hypocrisy, I care absolutely nothing; I have long set it at defiance.  And you yourself, Gertrude, when you deliberately reconsider the circumstances of estrangement and coldness under which, though beneath the same roof, we have lived for years, without either sympathy or confidence, can scarcely, if at all, regret the rupture of a tie which had long ceased to be anything better than an irksome and galling formality.  I do not desire to attribute to you the smallest blame.  There was an incompatibility, not of temper but of feelings, which made us strangers though calling one another man and wife.  Upon this fact I rest my own justification; our living together under these circumstances was, I dare say, equally undesired by us both.  It was, in fact, but a deference to the formal hypocrisy of the world.  At all events, the irrevocable act which separates us forever is done, and I have now merely to state so much of my intentions as may relate in anywise to your future arrangements.  I have written to your cousin, and former guardian, Mr. Latimer, telling him how matters stand between us.  You, I told him, shall have, without opposition from me, the whole of your own fortune to your own separate use, together with whatever shall be mutually agreed upon as reasonable, from my income, for your support and that of my daughter.  It will be necessary to complete your arrangements with expedition, as I purpose returning to Gray Forest in about three weeks; and as, of course, a meeting between you and those by whom I shall be accompanied is wholly out of the question, you will see the expediency of losing no time in adjusting everything for yours and my daughter’s departure.  In the details, of course, I shall not interfere.  I think I have made myself clearly intelligible, and would recommend your communicating at once with Mr. Latimer, with a view to completing temporary arrangements, until your final plans shall have been decided upon.

“Richard Marston”

The reader can easily conceive the feelings with which this letter was perused.  We shall not attempt to describe them; nor shall we weary his patience by a detail of all the circumstances attending Mrs. Marston’s departure.  Suffice it to mention that, in less than a fortnight after the receipt of the letter which we have just copied, she had forever left the mansion of Gray Forest.