But hope cherished to the last, went suddenly out like a candle extinguished. The ship which was to bring the exiles home arrived in safety, and she saw it and saw them, but did not see him. The blow was fatal. Without asking a question, or doubting the doom which had fallen upon him and therefore upon her, she returned home and put, as we have seen, a desperate end to her own life. Love long repressed had had its full revenge. She could not live without its object.
Such was the story of Elise Picard, told me in substance by the good woman who had befriended her and in detail by the letters she had left behind her in this same woman’s charge. I had scarcely reached the end, that is, had scarcely laid the last letter down, when a sudden hubbub rose in the hall without, followed by a pitiful low moan which somehow or other awoke in me a peculiar apprehension. Springing to the door I flung it open. Never shall I forget the picture that met my eyes. Frozen each in his place by some great emotion, the eager crowd before me stood silent, aghast, gazing at a figure that, emaciated almost beyond the semblance of a man, crouched against the wall which led towards the room of death.
The hush, the intolerable anguish expressed by that form, bent almost double by the sudden weight of woe which had fallen upon it, touched me to the quick. Grasping the hand of the first person I could reach, I asked:
But I did not need an answer to my question; I knew without words that Jean Picard stood before me.
I learned afterwards that he was among the men that passed before her eyes on the wharf, but he was so changed by disease and grief she had not recognized him. He had been spending the last two hours in a search for her.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 7 to 12, by Anna Katharine Green