The lady was Alice Duvernois:  her name was all that was known of her in the village—­it was all that she had told of herself.  Only a month previous to the scene above described she had arrived in Northport to obtain, as she said, a summer of quiet and sea-bathing.  She had come alone, engaged her own rooms, and for a time seemed to want nothing but solitude.

Even after she had made herself somewhat familiar with the other inmates of the boarding-house, nothing positive was learned of her history.  That she had been married was probable:  an indefinable something in her face and carriage seemed to reveal thus much:  moreover, her trunks were marked “James Duvernois.”

And yet, so young did she sometimes look, so childlike was her smile and so simple her manner, that there were curious ones who scouted the supposition of wifehood.  People addressed her both as “Miss” and “Mrs.”; at last it was discovered that her letters bore the latter title:  then she became popularly known as “the beautiful widow.”

It would be a waste of time to sketch the opening and ripening of the intimacy between Doctor Leighton and this fascinating stranger.  On his part it was as nearly a case of love at first sight as perhaps can occur among people of the Anglo-Saxon race.  From the beginning he had no doubts about giving her his whole heart:  he was mastered at once by an emotion which would not let him hesitate:  he longed with all his soul for her soul, and he strove to win it.

Well, we will not go over the story:  we know that he had triumphed.  Yes, in spite of her terror of the future, in spite of some withholding mystery in the past, she had granted him—­or rather she had not been able to prevent him from seizing—­her passionate affection.  She had uttered a promise which, a month before, she would not have dreamed herself capable of making.

In so doing she had acquired an almost unendurable happiness.  It was one of those mighty and terrible joys which are like the effect of opium—­one of those joys which condense life and abbreviate it, which excite and yet stupefy, which intoxicate and kill.  With this in her heart she lived ten of her old days in one, but also she drew for those ten days upon her future.

After one of her interviews with Leighton, after an hour of throbbing, of trembling, of vivid but confused emotions, her face would be as pale as death, and her weakness such that she could hardly speak.  The hands which, while they clung to his, had been soft and moist, became dry and hot as with fever, and then cold as ice.  At night she could scarcely sleep:  for hours her brain throbbed with the thought of him, and of what stood between him and her.  In the morning she was heavy with headache, dizzy, faint, hysterical; yet the moment she saw him again she was all life, all freshness.

From the point of confession there was no more resistance.  She would be his wife; she would be married whenever he wished; she seemed mad to reward him for his love; she wanted somehow to sacrifice herself for his sake.  Yet, although she hesitated no longer, she sometimes gazed at him with eyes full of anxiety, and uttered words which presaged evil.