pity arose in me, and solemnly hovered
over the silent form, like the spectre of my
love.

I went home, and a few hours afterwards
Merton came to me. He had found a letter
addressed to himself on her writing-table.
She had foreseen that she would die
suddenly, and had written her last wishes in it.
A telegram announcing her decease was to
be sent to a certain address in St. Petersburg.
No time was lost in despatching it.
An answer came, requesting that seals
might be put on all her effects until a
confidential person should arrive from St.
Petersburg and take charge of them. And,
in compliance with her strict direction, she
was to be buried in the sea.

The coffin containing her remains, was
placed on the litter she had used in life,
and carried on board a small yacht belonging
to the Mertons, wherein those faithful
friends of hers, and I, put out to sea. The
prayers of the Greek church were read,
and the coffin, covered with its shining
pall (the coverlet which had caused her to
be called the Mermaid), was lowered into
the peaceful Deep.

Not many tides had rolled over it, when
a packet sealed with the imperial arms of
Russia, was put into my hands.

This packet contained the letter she had
spoken of. Nothing besides the letter.
Thus it ran:

I am a Spy. Know how and why I
came to be that infamous and shameful
thing. At sixteen, I—a child even younger
than my age, in feeling, in education, in
principle—was married to Count Ivan
Vassiloff, a man sixty years old. Up
to the time of my marriage I had lived
in the happiest home in the world. I
played and danced, and thought Life meant
laughter and mirth and pleasure. My
husband was, without a doubt, the most
cruel of men. He was stern, vindictive,
and suspicious. He was madly in love
with me, and madly jealous of me.

I had married him to please my parents.
I had no prepossession in favour of any one
else, and I could have learned to love him;
but he made me abhor him, and defy him.

One day, after two years of hard usage,
he informed me that he intended taking
me to a country house he possessed near
Moscow, where, in solitude and quiet, I
might learn to forget the frivolities of my
youth. I went with him. For, in spite of
all, I had not learned to fear him.

Wo arrived at a gloomy house in the
centre of a yet gloomier forest, some forty
miles south of Moscow, and fifteen miles
away from the nearest village. In the
forest were the hovels of a few serfs, but
no other habitation, save his.

My heart sank as I retired to rest. "He
will murder me," I thought, "and no one
will ever know it." I believe the wine I had
drunk at supper was drugged.

When I awoke, I was in the dark. I
felt about, but instead of papered walls or
carpeted floor, I touched nothing but cold
stone. I screamed, and the echoes of my
screams seemed to resound as from a vault.
At last I fainted. When I came to my
senses, my husband, with a lamp in his
hand, was bending over me. I was on a
low pallet bed covered with woollen cloth,
in a lofty stone dungeon.

"You are now wholly in my power,"
said my husband, "and until your wicked
temper is subdued, you shall remain here.
When you have learned to obey me in all
things and submit yourself wholly to me,
I will restore you to liberty, and we will
travel. You shall never see St. Petersburg
again, for I intend to announce your death
to your parents and to the world."

I was like a fury, and I had the triumph
for a moment of making even him turn
pale, but I was wholly in his power, and
that fact restored him to himself, and made
him insensible to my denunciations. He
told me that twice a week he would bring
me food, and that at those times I would
have the opportunity of begging his pardon
and beseeching his indulgence.

I took an oath to rot in that dungeon
rather than yield to him. I kept my oath,
but how I suffered! An ardent, bright,
joyous temperament like mine condemned
at eighteen to darkness and solitude. How
I did not go mad, I cannot divine. I was
buoyed up, perhaps, with a sense that my
wretched captivity could not last, that
deliverance must come. I used to sing while
I could; but after the first year my voice
became too weak for that, and then I used
to compose verses and repeat them aloud,
and try to remember all I had read, and
invent stories, and declaim scenes out of the
plays I had seen. I never once spoke to him,
in five long dreary years. He spoke fiercely
to me, as often as he came; but I never
answered. Sometimes I believe he thought
I had grown deaf, he would shout so loudly
to me. He had shown me the notice of my
death sent to my parents and their reply:
so I knew I was cut off from the living.
Still I hoped. Morning and evening I