This evening"-- I choked at the word.

The day had been one string of extraordinary experiences, accumulating in intensity to the one ghastly discovery which had overtopped and overwhelmed all the rest.

"This evening," I falteringly continued, "I had set as the limit to my endurance of the intolerable situation.

During a minute of solitude preceding the dinner at Miss Cumberland's house on the Hill, I wrote a few lines to her sister, urging her to trust me with her fate and meet me at the station in time for the ten-thirty train.

I meant to carry her at once to P----, where I had a friend in the ministry who would at once unite us in marriage.