“I called in to see Mrs. Eaverson on the next day, reluctantly, but from a sense of duty.  I found her calm, but pale, and with a look of distress.  She said but little.  No allusion whatever was made to the condition in which I had found her on the previous afternoon.  I sat only half an hour, and then went away.  I could not stay longer, for my presence seemed oppressive to her, and hers was equally so to me.

“On the third day succeeding that on which Mr. Eaverson went to New York, I saw a newspaper paragraph headed, ’Melancholy Circumstances.’  It related, briefly, that the daughter of respectable and wealthy parents in New York had been deeply wronged about a year previous by an unprincipled cousin, whom she passionately loved.  The consequence was, that the young man had to leave the city, under the promise of never returning to it, unless he consented to marry his cousin.  This penalty was imposed by the father of the girl, who declared his intention to shoot him if he ever saw him in New York.  The result of this baseness on the part of the young man was the utter estrangement of his family.  They threw him off entirely.  But, as he had a handsome fortune in his own right, and the cause of his removal from New York did not become generally known, he soon found his way into the best society in a neighbouring city.  Some months afterwards he married a lovely girl, who was all unconscious of the base retch into whose keeping she had given the inestimable jewel of her love.  A few days since, the narration proceeded, the cousin, by some means or other, obtained a knowledge of this fact.  She wrote to him demanding an interview, and threatening that if she did not obtain one in twenty-four hours, she would immediately come to him and ascertain for herself, if what she had heard were true.  Alarmed for the peace of his bride, the young man hurried on to New York, and, at the risk of his life, gained an interview with the lovely girl he had so deeply injured.  He did not attempt to conceal the fact of his marriage, but only urged the almost broken-hearted victim of his base dishonour not to do any-thing that could bring to his wife a knowledge of his conduct, as it must for ever destroy her peace.  This confession blasted at once and for ever all the poor girl’s hopes.  She gave her betrayer one long, fixed, intense look of blended agony, reproach, and shame, and then, without uttering a word, retired slowly from his presence.  She sought her mother, who, from the first, had rather drawn her into her very bosom than thrown her off harshly, and related what she had just heard.  She shed no tear, she uttered no reproach, but simply told what her mother had known for months too well.  That night her spirit left its earthly habitation.  Whether she died of a broken heart, or by her own hands, is not known.  The family sought not to investigate the cause,—­to them it was enough to know that she was dead and at peace.

“Whether this statement ever met the eye of Mrs. Eaverson is more than I can tell.  I did not venture to call upon her after I had seen it.  A few weeks subsequently I met her in the street on the arm of her husband.  She was sadly changed, and had the appearance of one just recovering from a long and severe illness.  Eaverson himself had a look of suffering.