She read on to the end, and suddenly turned from pale to scarlet, started out of her chair, crumpled the letter up violently in her hand, and took several turns backward and forward in the room, without seeming to notice me as I stood by the door.

"You villain! you villain! you villain!" I heard her whisper to herself many times over, in a quick, hissing, fierce way.

Then she stopped, and said on a sudden, "Can it be true ?" Then she looked up, and, seeing me standing at the door, started as if I had been a stranger, changed color again, and told me, in a stifled voice, to leave her and come back again in half an hour.

I obeyed, feeling certain that she must have received some very bad news of her husband, and wondering, anxiously enough, what it might be.
When I returned to the breakfast-room her face was as much discomposed as ever.

Without speaking a word she handed me two sealed letters: one, a note to be left for Mr.Meeke at the parsonage; the other, a letter marked "Immediate," and addressed to her solicitor in London, who was also, I should add, her nearest living relative.
I left one of these letters and posted the other.