The major was awaiting us at the door and bowed gravely before her
heavily veiled figure.
"Miss Tuttle," he asked, without any preamble, the moment she was
well inside the house, "may I inquire of you here, and before I
show you what will excuse us for subjecting you to the distress of
entering these doors, whether your sister, Mrs. Jeffrey, had any
other name or was ever known by any other name than that of Veronica?"
"She was christened Antoinette, as well as Veronica; but the person
in whose memory the former name was given her was no honor to the
family and she very soon dropped it and was only known as Veronica.
Oh, what have I done?" she cried, awed and frightened by the silence
which followed the utterance of these simple words.
No one answered her. For the first time in her presence, the minds
of those who faced her were with another than herself. The bride!
the unhappy bride - no maiden but a wife! nay, a wife one minute,
a widow the next, and then again a newly-wedded bride before the
husband lying below was cold! What wander that she shrank when her
new-made bridegroom's lips approached her own! or that their
honeymoon was a disappointment! Or that the shadow which fell upon
her on that evil day never left her till she gave herself wholly up
to its influence and returned to die on the spot made awful by her
own crime.
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