'HONORED MISS DUDLEIGH--You will forgive me if I overstep the bounds of friendship in yielding to the inner voice which compels me to say that if before or on your marriage day you need advice or protection, you may command both from
"I did not expect a reply to this note, and I did not receive any. I thought I went as far as my position toward her allowed, but I have questioned it since--questioned if I should not have told her what the negro had heard and seen, and let her own judgment decide her fate. But I was not in my right mind in those days. I was too much a part of all this misery to be a fair judge of my own duty; and then the mysterious nature of Miss Leighton's remark, the incomprehensibility of the words--'I shall give you nothing till I am dead, and then I shall give you everything'--added such unreality to the scene, and awakened such curious conjectures, that I did not know where any of us stood, or to what especial misery the future pointed.
"'Till she was dead!' What could she, what did she mean? She would then give him everything! Ah! ah!--when she was dead! Well, so be it. Meanwhile, there was no prospect of death for any one, unless it was for Miss Dudleigh, whom rumor acknowledged to be still fading, though everything was being done for her comfort, and physician after physician employed.
"I saw Cæsar once again in these days. I met him in the street, seemingly greatly to his delight, for he smiled till his teeth shone from ear to ear, and made haste to remark, in quite a jovial voice:
"'I specs it's all right, massa. Massa Urquhart never looks at Miss Leighton now, but always doin' his best for missus, making her smile quite happy when she isn't coughing that dreadful cough. We will have a gay wedding yet. Yes; Miss Leighton seems to spect that; for she all de time making pretty things and trying them on missus, and laughing and cheering her up, just as if she didn't spect any one to die.'
"Yes, but this change of manner frightened me. I grew feverishly anxious, and spent night and day in asking myself unanswerable questions. Nor did these in any way abate when one day I was startled by the tidings that all preparations for refitting the great house had stopped; that the doctors had decided that Miss Dudleigh must remove to a warmer climate, and that accordingly upon her marriage she and her husband would set sail for the Bermudas, there to take up their abode till her health was quite restored. I doubted my ears; I doubted the facts; I doubted Urquhart, and I doubted one other most of all whose name I find it hard to mention even to myself.