He paused in his walk and listened.  All the house was profoundly still—­all the household evidently asleep—­except her!  He felt sure that she was sleepless.  Oh, that he could go and comfort her! even as a mother comforts her child; but he could not.

“I suppose many would say,” he murmured to himself, “that I owe my first earthly duty to the people who have called me to this high office; that private sorrows and private conscience should yield to the public, and they would be right.  Yet with me it is as if death had stepped in and relieved me of official duty to be taken up by my successor just the same—­”

He stopped and put his hand to his head, murmuring: 

“Is this special pleading?  I wonder if I am quite sane?”

Then dropping into a chair he covered his face with his hands and wept aloud.

Does any one charge him with weakness?  Think of the tragedy of a whole life compressed in that one crucial hour!

After a little while he grew more composed.  The tears had relieved the overladen heart.  He arose and recommenced his walk, reflecting with more calmness on the cruel situation.

“I shall right her wrongs in the only possible way in which it can be done, and I shall do no harm to the State.  Kennedy will be a better governor than I could have been.  He is an older, wiser, more experienced statesman.  I am conscious that I have been over-rated by the people who love me.  I was elected for my popularity, not for my merit.  And now—­I am not even the man that I was—­my life seems torn out of my bosom.  Oh, Cora, Cora! life of my life!  But you shall be happy, dear one! free and happy after a little while.  Ah!  I know your gentle heart.  You will weep for the fate of him whom you loved—­as a brother.  Oh!  Heaven! but your tears will come from a passing cloud that will leave your future life all clear and bright—­not darkened forever by the slavery of a union with one whom you do not—­only because you cannot—­love.”

He walked slowly up and down the floor a few more turns, then glanced at the clock on the mantel piece, and said: 

“Time passes.  I must write my letters.”

There was an elegant little writing desk standing in the corner of the room and filled with stationery, mostly for the convenience of the ladies of the family when the Rockharrts occupied their town house.

He went to this, sat down and opened it, laid paper out, and then with his elbow on the desk and his head leaning on the palm of his hand, he fell into deep thought.

At length he began to write rapidly.  He soon finished and sealed this letter.  Then he wrote a second and a longer one, sealed that also.  One—­the first written—­he put in the secret drawer of the desk; the other he dropped into his pocket.

Then he took “a long, last, lingering look” around the room.  This was the room in which he had first met Cora after long years of separation; where he had passed so many happy evenings with her, when his official duties as an assemblyman permitted him to do so; this was the room in which they had plighted their troth to each other, and to which, only six hours before, they had returned—­to all appearance—­a most happy bride and groom.  Ah, Heaven!