A strange explanation is given of the disappearance of Mrs. Roger Ransom on her wedding-day.  As our readers will remember, she accompanied her husband to the hotel, but managed to slip away and leave the house while he still stood at the desk.  This act, for which nothing in her previous conduct has in any way prepared her friends, is now said to have been due to the shock of hearing, some time during her wedding-day, that a sister whom she had supposed dead was really alive and in circumstances of almost degrading poverty.  As this sister had been her own twin the effect upon her mind was very serious.  To find and rescue this sister she left her newly made husband in the surreptitious manner already recorded in the papers.  That she is not fully herself is shown by her continued secrecy as to her whereabouts.  All that she has been willing to admit to the two persons she has so far taken into her confidence—­her husband and the agent who conducts her affairs—­is that she has found her sister and cannot leave her.  Why, she does not state.  The case is certainly a curious one and Mr. Ransom has the sympathy of all his friends.

Confused, and in a state of mind bordering on frenzy, Mr. Ransom returned to the hotel and sought refuge in his own room.  He put no confidence in what he had just read; he regarded it as a newspaper story and a great fake; but she had bid him read it, and this fact in itself was very disturbing.  For how could she have known about it if she had not been its author, and if she was its author, what purpose had she expected it to serve?

He was still debating this question when he reached his own room.  On the floor, a little way from the sill, lay a letter.  It had been thrust under the door during his absence.  Lifting it in some trepidation, he cast a glance at its inscription and sank staggering into the nearest chair, asking himself if he had the courage to open and read it.  For the handwriting, like that of the note handed him in the street, was Georgian’s, and he felt himself in a maze concerning her which made everything in her connection seem dreamlike and unreal.  It was not long, however, before he had mastered its contents.  They were strange enough, as this transcription of them will show.

You have seen what has happened to me, but you cannot understand how I feel. She looks exactly like me. It is that which makes the world eddy about me.  I cannot get used to it.  It is like seeing my own reflected image step from the mirror and walk about doing things.  Two of us, Roger, two!  If you saw her you would call her Georgian.  And she says that she knows you, admires you! and she says it in my voice!  I try to shut my ears, but I hear her saying it even when her lips do not move.  She is as ignorant as she is afflicted and I cannot leave her.  She cannot hear a sound, though she can talk well enough about what is going on in her own mind, and she is so wayward and uncertain of temper, owing to her ignorance and her difficulty in understanding me, that I don’t know what she would do if once let out of my sight.  I love you—­I love you—­but I must stay right here.

  Your affectionate and most unhappy