And thus they parted.  All their air castles and beautiful chambers of imagery, blown to the ground by one sad cyclone of fate.  In the city of A.P., a resting place was found for the stranger who had suddenly dashed from their lips the scarcely tasted cup of happiness.  Mr. Luzerne employed for her the best medical skill he could obtain.  She was suffering from nervous prostration and brain fever.  Annette was constant in her attentions to the sufferer, and day after day listened to her delirious ravings.  Sometimes she would speak of a diamond necklace, and say so beseechingly, “Clarence, don’t look at me so.  You surely can’t think that I am guilty.  I will go away and hide myself from you.  Clarence, you never loved me or you would not believe me guilty.”

But at length a good constitution and careful nursing overmastered disease, and she showed signs of recovery.  Annette watched over her when her wild ravings sounded in her ears like requiems for the loved and cherished dead.  Between her and the happiness she had so fondly anticipated, stood that one blighted life, but she watched that life just as carefully as if it had been the dearest life on earth she knew.

One day, as Annette sat by her bedside, she surmised from the look on her face that the wandering reason of the sufferer had returned.  Beckoning to Annette she said “Who are you and where am I?”

Annette answered, “I am your friend and you are with friends.”

“Poor Clarence,” she murmured to herself; “more sinned against than sinning.”

“My dear friend,” Annette said very tenderly, “you have been very ill, and I am afraid that if you do not be very quiet you will be very sick again.”  Annette gently smoothed her beautiful hair and tried to soothe her into quietness.  Rest and careful nursing soon wrought a wondrous change in Marie Luzerne, but Annette thoughtfully refrained from all reference to her past history and waited for time to unravel the mystery she could not understand, and with this unsolved mystery the match between her and Luzerne was broken off.  At length, one day when Marie’s health was nearly restored, she asked for writing materials, and said, “I mean to advertise for my mother in a Southern paper.  It seems like a horrid dream that all I knew or loved, even my husband, whom I deserted, believed that I was dead, till I came suddenly on him in the park with a young lady by his side.  She looked like you.  Was it you?”

“Yes,” said Annette, as a sigh of relief came to her lips.  If Clarence had wooed and won her he had not willfully deceived her.  “Oh, how I would like to see him.  I was wayward and young when I left him in anger.  Oh, if I have sinned I have suffered; but I think that I could die content if I could only see him once more.”  Annette related the strange sad story to her physician, who decided that it was safe and desirable that there should be an interview between them.  Luzerne visited his long lost wife and after a private interview, he called Annette to the room, who listened sadly while she told her story, which exonerated Luzerne from all intent to deceive Annette by a false marriage while she had a legal claim upon him.