I now dispatch is the last you will ever receive from me, for
I break the compact and relinquish the reward you offer.
Those last words were written in the hush of dawn on that morning after the discovery, for I was eager to be done with my now insupportable task, and as Monica had said that her father was past all danger, I feared no harm would follow the delivery of that final record. I had waited impatiently for the first ray of light that I might make it, and when it was written paused for the page to dry. That pause was fatal, for worn out with a sleepless night and the excitement of the hours, my eyes closed, my head fell on my arms, and I lost all consciousness in a deep slumber, which must have lasted for an hour, and when I awoke the sun shone in upon me. Intent on posting my letter unobserved as usual, I looked for it, and seeing it wished that I had never wakened. There it lay with its infamous purpose clearly confessed in its closing lines, and on it a bank-note, a slip of paper, all three stabbed through by the tiny dagger that pinned them to their place. I knew the dagger, had seen it on Monica’s study-table, and admired its dainty workmanship; I knew the sharp Italian writing on the paper, for I had seen it day after day; I knew whose eyes had read my words, whose hand had stabbed the treacherous sheet, whose contempt had spared me for a remorse sharper than any pang of death. The slip held these words:
"We are gone for ever, leaving despair for the lover, wages for the tool, a friend for the traitor."
How long I sat there I cannot tell. The sun came up, the world woke, and life went on about me, but mine seemed to have ended.
A dull hope woke at last within me, and I went wandering through the house, looking for that which I shall never find. Every room was deserted, but that of the grim maid, Catherine; and from her I got no help, but a curt request to breakfast and go, as she had orders to close the house, and return to her former mistress, Mrs. St. Michael. "Were they there?" I asked. No, they were miles away now, and she would have no preceding questions put to her. My one refuge was Mr. North, and to him I hurried. His office was closed. I knew his house, and ran to it. Crape shrouded the knocker, and when I was admitted it was to find him dead. The day before a strange gentleman had called, had a long interview, and when he went Mr. North was found speechless in his chair. He never had revived, and died at dawn. His secret had died with him, and through all these wary years I have never gleaned a hint of it; never seen Monica; never regained my peace of mind, nor found rest from pondering miserably over these unsolved Enigmas.
A coquette is a rose, from which every lover plucks a leaf—the thorns are left for her future husband.
