THE UNOPENED LETTER.

It had been arranged before this dinner party was given, that Church was to take Constance back to visit her father, on the next day. She thought of this with a flutter of mingled delight and dread, as she left those two men together. Some preparations were to be made for the journey, and, up to this time, she had forgotten to give any orders regarding them.

Letters had frequently passed between Constance and her father, but they were all vague and unsatisfactory on both sides. That which lay deepest in the heart of each, could not be written about; so their correspondence was mere surface writing,—husks incapable of satisfying any hunger of the soul. Up to this time, the woman had shrank from meeting her father face to face, lest he should see all the feverish misery brought on her by the sacrifice she had made. She was brave enough to desire concealment of the vulture, whose beak was forever gnawing toward her heart. But about this time her robust health commenced to give way, and a longing came upon her to speak with the old man for whom she had suffered so much.

Church had consented, and in the morning they were to set forth. She thought of this with a thrill of expectation, while mounting the stairs, and then remembered another thing. That day was the anniversary of her marriage with Church. It was a year since then—a year since she had known herself a widow.

This thought had shot through her soul more than once that day, but she resolutely put it aside. Now it would not be evaded, but came back upon her with overwhelming force. The feverish excitement of the night was over, and she had no power to resist the mournful truth. Notwithstanding her beauty, her wit, and the homage amounting almost to adoration that met her on every side, she was a miserable, miserable woman.

A pretty dressing room opened from the bed chamber which Constance occupied, and in it she spent most of her time. She entered this apartment, feeling weary and depressed; for amid all this splendor the young creature had no real enjoyment. In her highest social triumphs the heart in her bosom was constantly crying out in anguish for the love which had passed away from her forever. Go where she would, say what she would, that one form was eternally by her side, that one voice whispered in her ear.

This evening, the woman who had sparkled like a star in her drawing room, slunk with the feelings of a criminal into the privacy of her own chamber, and amid all its splendor fell into a state of utter desolation.

A fire was burning in the grate of glittering steel, soft lights fell through shades that seemed moulded out of pearls—a delicate gleam of silk and the snowy mist of lace floated before the windows—but Constance saw nothing of these things as she came in, sick of prosperity, hating the success she had once been so eager in seeking. Down into the silken depths of an easy chair the woman dropped, and clasping both hands over her knees, fell into a train of harrowing thoughts.

"Just a year," she murmured, "just a year! How long it seems! how long it seems! Oh my God, will all my poor life drag like this?"

The great tears came rolling down her cheeks and dropped away like diamonds, that you could have counted one by one as they fell and were crushed in the floating lace of her dress. She planted her feet upon the fender, and bowed her face down upon her knees, shuddering and moaning over that one year of her life. Twelve months a widow, and all those twelve months a wife—the wife of a man she knew to be hard and vile enough to take her for a price.

After awhile the woman arose and prepared to undress herself. She stood before the glass all changed and sad, regarding her beauty with heavy eyes that seemed to reproach her from its icy surface. How resplendent she was, how strangely the golden hair gleamed back upon her; that hair which should have been hidden under a widow's cap. The very rustle of her dress brought a shudder with it. One by one she took off the ornaments which he had given her and cast them on the table. Then, drawing a deep, deep breath, she folded both arms over her bosom and sat down in the chair again, with such feelings of freedom as a slave knows when the chains are shaken from his limbs. Thus she sat a full hour until the fire burned low, and a chill of cold made her tremble.

"I am cold, I am cold!" she moaned, looking wearily around her. "Is it that he, my husband, my beloved, is near me, bringing the ice of the grave with him? Oh, William, William! do you hate, do you despise me, in that other world? I did it for my father—I did it for my father! have none of the angels you are among, told you that I look into my soul, dearest, and see how I loathe all this! Others would not believe it, but you will, you will!"

Chilled and suffering from the cold, the young woman looked around for some garment to wrap herself in; a heap of diamonds flashing on the white marble of the dressing-table, and a few scattered flowers, mocked her coldness. She turned from them with sick loathing. They were given by the man whose voice came droning to her from below.

But she must prepare for her journey. No vestige of all this unholy wealth should go with her.

All at once she thought of the little trunk which had been so hastily packed for her journey west, on her fatal wedding-day. In that was a dress that Sterling had given her; the very garment which she had put on that morning, while her bosom swelled with tears, at the blessed thought of seeing him again. On reaching Washington, she had put the dress aside, for it seemed like sacrilege, to wear it in the presence of that man, and she held it sacred, as widows keep their mourning garments, long after they are faded out of use.

Constance started up, and, taking a wax light from her dressing-table, passed into a closet in the back part of the house, where the little battered trunk had been stored away.

Constance trembled violently, as she drew forth the trunk, and her face was white as snow when she opened it. The dove-colored dress with its modest blue trimmings, lay carefully folded on the top. Tears rushed into her eyes and blinded her, as she took it up and fled from the room, for she had no courage to look at anything else that trunk contained.

"Poor thing, poor thing! how natural it looks!" she moaned, unfolding the dress as if it had been a shroud. "How happy we were, my beloved, that day when you bought it for me. I will wear it home again; nothing this man has given me, shall cross the threshold of that dear old room. The dear old room! Oh how happy we were, you and I, darling! Now—Oh my God! my God! I am that man's wife!"

Constance fell down on her knees, and burying her face in the easy chair, sobbed in pitiful distress, while the voice of her husband came up from the lower rooms, where he still held a secret conference with his friend.

Passionate grief must exhaust itself, sooner or later. By degrees, the sobs that filled that little room, subsided, and Constance seated herself by the white ashes of the fire, and resolutely unfolded the dress in which she was resolved to travel home, the next day. As she did so, a paper rustled under her hands. She drew it forth from the pocket, and leaning toward the light, saw that it was a letter directed to herself. She knew the hand-writing. All around her mouth came the white agony of an awful surprise. Had her young husband written her from the dead?

She arose trembling from her chair, and tottering like an old woman, went up to the light, read the letter through, and fell upon the floor.

It was the letter Rhoda Weeks had given her on the railroad platform just one year ago that day—a letter from her living husband, William Sterling, full of love, and beseeching her to come to him.

In her fall the hand of that miserable woman struck the steel fender, and the letter fell inside. A spark from the embers seized upon it, grew, brightened, and spread into a quick flame which left nothing but a scroll of black gossamer quivering among the gray ashes. The flame, as it blazed up for one moment, revealed a deadly white face contracted and locked as if death had fallen upon it suddenly in the crisis of some great agony.

When Church came up-stairs an hour later, he found his wife sitting upon the hearth rug, with both hands locked over her knees, gazing upon some fragments of burnt paper that fluttered in the ashes.

She lifted her head as he came in, saw who he was, and sprang to her feet with the leap of a panther.