It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs.Barnet had died suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had occupied near London.
Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out of the doorway.

Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who doubted their stability.

The fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual death from his conjecture.

He went to the landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the solicitor's house by a cross path.

The faint words that came from his moving lips were simply, 'At last!' Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving.