"By that I judge that you have not been keeping abreast of the times, or you would have known, girl, that your father is dead, and that he has disinherited you, leaving every dollar of his wealth to me." "Dead!" Faynie repeated the words in an awful whisper.
It seemed to her that every drop of blood in her veins seemed suddenly turned to ice.

A mist swam before her eyes and she put out her hand gropingly, grasping the back of the nearest chair for support.
She did not even hear the last of the sentence.

Her thoughts and hearing seemed to end with that one awful word.
"That is what I said," replied her stepmother, nonchalantly, "and you are his murderess, girl, quite as much as though you had plunged a dagger in his heart.

Your elopement caused him to have a terrible hemorrhage.

He knew all the details about it in less than an hour's time, learning from one of the servants how you stole out of the house and met the tall man at the gate, who took you off in a closed carriage, and just as he made this discovery one of the maids handed him your note, which you left pinned to the pillow, addressed to him.