Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/300

294 remembered that the clerk who had been on duty before midnight had undoubtedly been succeeded by this time.

I ran back to my rooms. The perspiration was dripping from my forehead and the glimpse I caught of my ghastly face in the looking-glass, which hung above the mantelpiece, frightened me. Ah! there was an envelope in the frame of this looking-glass, which was evidently meant to attract my attention. I made a bound forward and seized it. It was addressed simply to "Elsie."

A cry escaped my lips as I saw this. He had left me, and this was his explanation. The letters on the envelope became enveloped in a blurred mist, and I could see nothing. I steadied myself by grasping the mantelpiece with one hand, while I pressed the other, holding the letter, against my heart. I must have stood thus for a minute; then, with a feeling of astonishment at my own helplessness, I broke upon the envelope and read this, written in a trembling, hurried hand, mis-spelt and blotted: