“I looked along the two rays of light, and I saw down into his inmost heart.  It was black as night, and on it were written, in the red flaming letters which are the handwriting of the fallen angel, ’Without pity and without remorse.  He has strewn with misery the paths of others, and he will live to strew with misery the path of this woman by his side.’  I read that, and then the rays of light shifted and pointed over his shoulder; and there, behind him, stood a fiend laughing.  And the rays of light shifted once more, and pointed over your shoulder; and there behind you, stood an angel weeping.  And the rays of light shifted for the third time, and pointed straight between you and that man.  They widened and widened, thrusting you both asunder, one from the other.  And the clergyman looked for the marriage-service in vain:  it was gone out of the book, and he shut up the leaves, and put it from him in despair.  And I woke with my eyes full of tears and my heart beating—­for I believe in dreams.

“Believe too, Miss Fairlie—­I beg of you, for your own sake, believe as I do.  Joseph and Daniel, and others in Scripture, believed in dreams.  Inquire into the past life of that man with the scar on his hand, before you say the words that make you his miserable wife.  I don’t give you this warning on my account, but on yours.  I have an interest in your well-being that will live as long as I draw breath.  Your mother’s daughter has a tender place in my heart—­for your mother was my first, my best, my only friend.”

There the extraordinary letter ended, without signature of any sort.

The handwriting afforded no prospect of a clue.  It was traced on ruled lines, in the cramped, conventional, copy-book character technically termed “small hand.”  It was feeble and faint, and defaced by blots, but had otherwise nothing to distinguish it.

“That is not an illiterate letter,” said Miss Halcombe, “and at the same time, it is surely too incoherent to be the letter of an educated person in the higher ranks of life.  The reference to the bridal dress and veil, and other little expressions, seem to point to it as the production of some woman.  What do you think, Mr. Hartright?”

“I think so too.  It seems to me to be not only the letter of a woman, but of a woman whose mind must be——­”

“Deranged?” suggested Miss Halcombe.  “It struck me in that light too.”

I did not answer.  While I was speaking, my eyes rested on the last sentence of the letter:  “Your mother’s daughter has a tender place in my heart—­for your mother was my first, my best, my only friend.”  Those words and the doubt which had just escaped me as to the sanity of the writer of the letter, acting together on my mind, suggested an idea, which I was literally afraid to express openly, or even to encourage secretly.  I began to doubt whether my own faculties were not in danger of losing their balance.  It seemed almost like a monomania to be tracing back everything strange that happened, everything unexpected that was said, always to the same hidden source and the same sinister influence.  I resolved, this time, in defence of my own courage and my own sense, to come to no decision that plain fact did not warrant, and to turn my back resolutely on everything that tempted me in the shape of surmise.