Chapter 23

THE close of the next day did not bring Mr. Markland, but only a hurried letter, saying that important business would probably keep him in New York a day or two longer. A postscript to the letter read thus:

"Mr. Elbridge will send you a deed of some warehouse property that I have sold. Sign and return it by the bearer."

If Mr. Markland had only said where a letter would reach him in New York, his wife would have lost no time in writing fully on the subject of Mr. Lyon's conduct toward Fanny. But, as there was great uncertainty about this, she felt that she could only await his return. And now she blamed herself deeply for having kept her word to Fanny. It was one of those cases, she saw, in which more evil was likely to flow from keeping a blind, almost extorted promise, than from breaking it.

"I ought to have seen my duty clearer," she said, in self-condemnation. "What blindness has possessed me!" And so she fretted herself, and admitted into her once calm, trusting spirit, a flood of self-reproaches and disquietude.

Fanny, now that the so anxiously dreaded period had gone by, and there was hope that her father would learn all from Mr. Lyon before he returned home, relapsed into a more passive state of mind. She had suffered much beyond her natural powers of endurance, in the last few days. A kind of reaction now followed, and she experienced a feeling of indifference as to results and consequences, that was a necessary relief to the over-strained condition of mind which had for some time existed.

On the day following, another letter was received from Mr. Markland.

"You must not expect me until the last of this week," he said. "Business matters of great importance will keep me here until that time. I have a letter from Mr. Lyon which I do not much like. It seems that he was at Woodbine Lodge, and saw Fanny, while I was away in New York. I have talked with a Mr. Fenwick here, a gentleman who knows all about him and his business, and he assures me that the reasons which Mr. Lyon gave for returning as he did from the South are valid. What troubles me most is that Fanny should have concealed it from both you and her father. We will talk this matter over fully on my return. If I had known it earlier, it might have led to an entire change of plans for the future. But it is too late now.

"I wrote you yesterday that I wished you to sign a deed which Mr. Elbridge would send out. He will send two more, which I would also like you to sign. I am making some investments here of great prospective value."

Mrs. Markland read this letter over and over again, and sat and thought about its contents until her mind grew so bewildered that it seemed as if reason were about to depart. If it was suggested that she ought not to sign the deeds that were to be presented for her signature, the suggestion was not for a single moment