Grace ran to her, and at the very first glance uttered a shriek of recognition.  She caught it from Jael, tore it open, saw the signature, and sunk into a chair, half fainting, with the letter pressed convulsively to her breast.

Jael, trembling, but comparatively self-possessed, ran to the door directly and locked it.

“My darling! my darling! he is alive!  The dear words, they swim before my eyes.  Read! read! tell me what he says.  Why has he abandoned me?  He has not abandoned me!  O God! what have I done? what have I done?”

Before that letter was half read, or rather sobbed, out to her, Grace tore off all her bridal ornaments and trampled them under her feet, and moaned, and twisted, and writhed as if her body was being tortured as well as her heart; for Henry was true as ever, and she had married a villain.

She took the letter from Jael, and devoured every word; though she was groaning and sobbing with the wildest agony all the time.

“New York, July 18th.

“My own dearest grace,—­I write you these few lines in wonder and pain.  I have sent you at least fifteen letters, and in most of them I have begged you to write to me at the Post-office, New York; yet not one line is here to greet me in your dear handwriting.  Yet my letters must have all reached Woodbine Villa, or why are they not sent back?  Of three letters I sent to my mother, two have been returned from Aberystwith, marked, ‘Gone away, and not left her address.’

“I have turned this horrible thing every way in my mind, and even prayed God to assist my understanding; and I come back always to the same idea that some scoundrel has intercepted my letters.

“The first of these I wrote at the works on the evening I left Hillsborough; the next I wrote from Boston, after my long illness, in great distress of mind on your account; for I put myself in your place, and thought what agony it would be to me if nine weeks passed, and no word from you.  The rest were written from various cities, telling you I was making our fortune, and should soon be home.  Oh, I can not write of such trifles now!

“My own darling, let me find you alive; that is all I ask.  I know I shall find you true to me, if you are alive.

“Perhaps it would have been better if my heart had not been so entirely filled by you.  God has tried me hard in some things, but He has blessed me with true friends.  It was ungrateful of me not to write to such true friends as Dr. Amboyne and Jael Dence.  But, whenever I thought of England, I saw only you.

“By this post I write to Dr. Amboyne, Mr. Bolt, Mr. Bayne, and Jael Dence.

“This will surely baffle the enemy who has stopped all my letters to you, and will stop this one, I dare say.

“I say no more, beloved one.  What is the use?  You will perhaps never see this letter, and you know more than I can say, for you know how I love you:  and that is a great deal more than ever I can put on paper.