It was on the fifteenth of the month, when she happened to take up the morning paper.
She turned first--as she always did--to the column containing notices of marriages and deaths.
And her face grew wild and white as she read:
MARRIED.--On the morning of the 10th instant, at Blue Cliff Hall, Virginia, the seat of the bride, by the Rev. Dr. Beresford Jones, Mr. Alden Lytton, of Richmond, to Miss Emma Angela, only daughter of the late Charles Cavendish, Governor of Virginia.
She read no further that day. There were other marriages following this; but she felt no curiosity now about them. And there was a formidable row of death notices, headed by the obituary of Mrs. Cavendish, but she did not even see it.
The announcement of the marriage had taken her by surprise. She had not expected to see it for a month yet to come. And, as she did not observe the notice of Mrs. Cavendish's death, she could not understand why the marriage had been hastened by so many weeks.
"So it is over," she said. "It is over, and it has been over for five days. They are in the midst of their happiness, enjoyed at the expense of my misery. Theirs is a fool's paradise from which I could eject them at any moment; but I will not--not just yet. The longer I suspend the blow the heavier it will fall at last. They will carry out their programme, I presume; so far, at least, as to go upon their bridal trip to Europe. I could stop them on the eve of their voyage; but I will not. I will let them go and return, and hold their wedding-reception, and then, in the midst of their joy and triumph, in the presence of their admiring friends--"
She paused to gloat with demoniac enjoyment over the picture her wicked imagination had conjured up.
--"Then I will turn all their joy to despair, all their triumph to humiliation, all their glory to shame! And I will do all this alone--alone, or use others only as my blind tools.
"Of course they will take this city on their way to New York to embark for Europe. And they will call on me to show me their happiness, and take a keener relish of it from seeing the contrast of my misery. But they shall be disappointed in that, at least. I will not be dragged at the wheels of their triumphal car. I will not stay here to receive them. I will leave town, and stay out of it until I am sure that they have passed through and left it."