"Poor Flo! when can I see her?" he said, and furtively brushed away a tear; then he added, "I see now, mother, that you are right,--no one has been to blame; but it is one of the strangest and saddest occurrences imaginable; it is really worthy of Lady Georgiana Fullerton's title, 'Too Strange not to be True.' But tell me, when will poor Flo be visible?"
"Not till the evening, at all events; it will be better for her to remain perfectly quiet all day. You will come to dinner, of course."
"Yes; and there is nothing to be done now, I suppose; there would be no object in my seeing Earnscliffe?"
"None in the world; it would only give him an opportunity of railing at religion, and, as he says, at Flora's heartless sacrifice of his love to prejudice."
"Then I may as well go away, and try to kill time as well as I can until dinner; for of course you and Marie will be occupied with poor Flo. Good-bye, then, for the present."
As soon as he was gone, Mrs. Adair sat down and wrote:--
"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and to assure you that we all exonerate you perfectly from having had any intention to deceive us. Poor Flora's mistake was a most unfortunate one; but as soon as she learned what the reality was--how she learned it I do not yet know, for she has been unable to tell me anything--she could not have acted otherwise than she has done.
"However great _your_ sufferings may be, _hers_ far surpass them;--she has a double weight of sorrow to bear: her own, and the greater one--that of knowing that she has inflicted pain on one whom she loves, and that he has ceased to believe in her. Her first words on being roused from the fainting fit in which I found her when I came in were, 'He called me cold, passionless; he does not believe in me any longer;' and then she relapsed into insensibility. If this is heartlessness, I leave it to you to judge.
"Adieu, and believe me to be very sincerely yours,
Having directed her letter, and desired it to be taken immediately to the Hotel de Douvres, for Mr. Earnscliffe, she went up to Flora's darkened room, where she found Marie watching beside the poor sleeper.
Mrs. Adair's note was handed to Mr. Earnscliffe, as he sat in his room with folded arms and his head drooping upon his breast. He seized it eagerly, tore it open, and glanced his eye over it; then crushing it up in his hand, and with his teeth firmly set together, he muttered, "Psha! let her Church, to whose senseless maxims she sacrifices me, console her! But I will show what that Church is, how its teaching is destructive of all the best qualities of the human heart and mind, since it can make such a creature as Flora Adair was act in direct contradiction to reason and love. It is too foolish to say that when a man is married _only_ according to the laws of the established Church of England, that that Church has not the right to annul its own act. If Rome had had anything to do with my marriage, one could understand it; but as it is--damnation, it is unbearable!" and he stamped about the room,--then rang the bell furiously.