Reaching the age when the marriage contract should have been fulfilled, Miriam had utterly repudiated it.
Some time afterwards had occurred that terrible event to which Miriam had alluded when she revealed her name; an event, the frightful and mysterious circumstances of which will recur to many minds, but of which few or none can have found for themselves a satisfactory explanation.

It only concerns the present narrative, inasmuch as the suspicion of being at least an accomplice in the crime fell darkly and directly upon Miriam herself.
"But you know that I am innocent!" she cried, interrupting herself again, and looking Kenyon in the face.
"I know it by my deepest consciousness," he answered; "and I know it by Hilda's trust and entire affection, which you never could have won had you been capable of guilt." "That is sure ground, indeed, for pronouncing me innocent," said Miriam, with the tears gushing into her eyes.

"Yet I have since become a horror to your saint-like Hilda, by a crime which she herself saw me help to perpetrate!" She proceeded with her story.

The great influence of her family connections had shielded her from some of the consequences of her imputed guilt.

But, in her despair, she had fled from home, and had surrounded her flight with such circumstances as rendered it the most probable conclusion that she had committed suicide.