"And now, O my beloved, good-bye! I cannot even tell to you the
anguish which is wringing my heart. It is all summed up in this. I
love you! I love you! and we must say forever a farewell!

"THEODORA.

"P.S.--I am sending this to your home."

As he read the last words the paper slipped from Josiah's nerveless
hands, and for many minutes he sat as one stricken blind and dumb. Then
his poor, plebeian figure seemed to crumple up, and with an inarticulate
cry of rage and despair he fell forward, with his head upon his
out-stretched arms across the breakfast-table.

How long he remained there he never knew. It seemed a whole lifetime
later when he began to realize things--to know where he was--to
remember.

"Oh, God!" he said. "Oh, God!"

He picked up the letter and read it all over again, weighing every word.

Who was this thief who had stolen his wife? Hector? Hector? Yes, it was
Lord Bracondale; he remembered now he had heard him called that at
Beechleigh. He would like to kill him. But was he a thief, after all? or
was not--he--Josiah the thief? To have stolen her happiness, and her
life. Her young life that might have been so fair, though how did he
know that at the time! He had never thought of such things. She was what
he desired, and he had bought her with gold. No, he was not a thief, he
had bought her with gold, and because of that she was going to keep to
her bargain, and make him a true and faithful wife.