The bare thought of it made my flesh creep.
I was determined never again to see the man who had so cruelly deceived me.
I am in the same mind still—with this difference, that I might consent to see him, if I could be positively assured first of the death of his wife. That is not likely to happen.
Let me get on with my letter, and tell you what I did on my arrival in Edinburgh.
"The coachman recommended me to the house in the Canongate where you found me lodging.
I wrote the same day to relatives of my father, living in Glasgow, to tell them where I was, and in what a forlorn position I found myself.
"I was answered by return of post.
The head of the family and his wife requested me to refrain from visiting them in Glasgow.
They had business then in hand which would take them to Edinburgh, and I might expect to see them both with the least possible delay.
"They arrived, as they had promised, and they expressed themselves civilly enough.
Moreover, they did certainly lend me a small sum of money when they found how poorly my purse was furnished.
But I don't think either husband or wife felt much for me.
They recommended me, at parting, to apply to my father's other relatives, living in England.
I may be doing them an injustice, but I fancy they were eager to get me (as the common phrase is) off their hands.
"The day when the departure of my relatives left me friendless was also the day, sir, when I had that dream or vision of you which I have already related.
I lingered on at the house in the Canongate, partly because the landlady was kind to me, partly because I was so depressed by my position that I really did not know what to do next.
"In this wretched condition you discovered me on that favorite walk of mine from Holyrood to Saint Anthony's Well.
Believe me, your kind interest in my fortunes has not been thrown away on an ungrateful woman.
I could ask Providence for no greater blessing than to find a brother and a friend in you.
You have yourself destroyed that hope by what you said and did when we were together in the parlor.
I don't blame you: I am afraid my manner (without my knowing it) might have seemed to give you some encouragement.
I am only sorry—very, very sorry—to have no honorable choice left but never to see you again.
"After much thin king, I have made up my mind to speak to those other relatives of my father to whom I have not yet applied.
The chance that they may help me to earn an honest living is the one chance that I have left.
God bless you, Mr. Germaine!
I wish you prosperity and happiness from the bottom of my heart; and remain, your grateful servant,
"M. VAN BRANDT.
"P.S.—I sign my own name (or the name which I once thought was mine) as a proof that I have honestly written the truth about myself, from first to last.
For the future I must, for safety's sake, live under some other name.
I should like to go back to my name when I was a happy girl at home.
But Van Brandt knows it; and, besides, I have (no matter how innocently) disgraced it.
Good-by again, sir; and thank you again."
So the letter concluded.
I read it in the temper of a thoroughly disappointed and thoroughly unreasonable man.
Whatever poor Mrs. Van Brandt had done, she had done wrong.
It was wrong of her, in the first place, to have married at all.
It was wrong of her to contemplate receiving Mr. Van Brandt again, even if his lawful wife had died in the interval.
It was wrong of her to return my letter of introduction, after I had given myself the trouble of altering it to suit her capricious fancy.
It was wrong of her to take an absurdly prudish view of a stolen kiss and a tender declaration, and to fly from me as if I were as great a scoundrel as Mr. Van Brandt himself.
And last, and more than all, it was wrong of her to sign her Christian name in initial only.
Here I was, passionately in love with a woman, and not knowing by what fond name to identify her in my thoughts!
"M. Van Brandt!" I might call her Maria, Margaret, Martha, Mabel, Magdalen, Mary—no, not Mary.
The old boyish love was dead and gone, but I owed some respect to the memory of it.
If the
"Mary" of my early days were still living, and if I had met her, would she have treated me as this woman had treated me?
Never!
It was an injury to "Mary" to think even of that heartless creature by her name.
Why think of her at all?
Why degrade myself by trying to puzzle out a means of tracing her in her letter?
It was sheer folly to attempt to trace a woman who had gone I knew not whither, and who herself informed me that she meant to pass under an assumed name.