He took the hands, bowed his forehead upon them and groaned; then drew them to his lips and left her.

With a slow, weary step she turned and went up to her room and read Mr. Hammond’s letter.  It was long and kind, full of affection and wise counsel, but contained no allusion to Mr. Murray.

As she refolded it she saw a slip of paper which had fallen unnoticed on the carpet, and picking it up she read these words: 

“It grieves me to have to tell you that, after all, I fear St. Elmo will marry Estelle Harding.  He does not love her, she can not influence him to redeem himself; his future looks hopeless indeed.  Edna, my child! what have you done!  Oh! what have you done!”

Her heart gave a sudden, wild bound, then a spasm seemed to seize it, and presently the fluttering ceased, her pulses stopped, and a chill darkness fell upon her.

Her head sank heavily on her chest, and when she recovered, her memory she felt an intolerable sensation of suffocation, and a sharp pain that seemed to stab the heart, whose throbs were slow and feeble.

She raised the window and leaned out panting for breath, and the freezing wind powdered her face with fine snowflakes, and sprinkled its fairy flower-crystals over her hair.

The outer world was chill and dreary, the leafless limbs of the trees in the park looked ghostly and weird against the dense dun clouds which seemed to stretch like a smoke mantle just above the sea of roofs; and, dimly seen through the white mist, Brooklyn’s heights and Staten’s hills were huge outlines monstrous as Echidna.

Physical pain blanched Edna’s lips, and she pressed her hand repeatedly to her heart, wondering what caused those keen pangs.  At last, when the bodily suffering passed away, and she sat down exhausted, her mind reverted to the sentence in Mr. Hammond’s letter.

She knew the words were not lightly written, and that his reproachful appeal had broken from the depths of his aching heart, and was intended to rouse her to some action.

“I can do nothing, say nothing!  Must sit still and wait patiently—­ prayerfully.  To-day, if I could put out my hand and touch Mr. Murray, and bind him to me for ever, I would not.  No, no!  Not a finger must I lift, even between him and Estelle!  But he will not marry her!  I know—­I feel that he will not.  Though I never look upon his face again, he belongs to me!  He is mine, and no other woman can take him from me.”

A strange, mysterious, shadowy smile settled on her pallid features, and faintly and dreamily she repeated: 

“And yet I know past all doubting, truly—­A knowledge greater than grief can dim—­I know as he loved, he will love me duly, Yea, better, e’en better than I love him.  And as I walk by the vast, calm river, The awful river so dread to see, I say, ’Thy breadth and thy depth for ever Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.’”