Part 51 (2/2)

”Very well! I shall, of course, immediately comply with your request.

A few hours will suffice me to make the move you suggest,” frigidly responded Gerald G.o.ddard; but he had grown ghastly white with wounded pride and anger at being thus ignominiously turned out of the house where for so many years he had reigned supreme.

Emil Correlli bowed as he concluded, and left the room without a word in reply.

As the door closed after him Mr. G.o.ddard sank back in his chair with a heavy sigh, as he realized fully, for the first time, how entirely alone in the world he was, and what a desolate future lay before him, shorn, as he was, of home and friends and all the wealth which for so long had paved a s.h.i.+ning way for him through the world.

His head sank heavily upon his breast, and he sat thus for several minutes absorbed in painful reflections.

He was finally aroused by the shutting of the street door, when, looking up, he saw the new master of the house pa.s.s the window, and he knew that henceforth he would be his bitter enemy.

He glanced wistfully around the beautiful room--the dearest in the house to him; at the elegant cases of valuable books, every one of which he himself had chosen and caused to be uniformly bound; at the choice paintings in their costly frames upon the walls, and many of which had been painted by his own hands; at the numerous pieces of statuary and rare curios which he knew would never a.s.sume their familiar aspect in any other place.

How could he ever make up his mind to dismantle that home-like spot and bury his treasures in a close and gloomy storage warehouse?

”Homeless, penniless, and alone?” he murmured, crus.h.i.+ng back into his breast a sob that arose to his throat.

Then suddenly his glance fell upon the table beside him and rested upon the letter that Mr. Clayton had given to him, and which, in the exciting occurrences of the last hour, he had entirely forgotten.

He took it up and sighed heavily again as the faint odor of Anna's favorite perfume was wafted to his nostrils.

”How changed is everything since she wrote this!--what a complete revolution in one's life a few hours can make!” he mused.

He broke the seal with some curiosity, but with something of awe as well, for it seemed to him almost like a message from the other world, and drew forth two sheets of closely-written paper.

The missive was not addressed to any one; the writer had simply begun what she had to say and told her story through to the end, and then signed her name in full in a clear, bold hand.

The man had not read half the first page before his manner betrayed that its contents were of the most vital importance.

On and on he read, his face expressing various emotions until by the time he reached the end there was an eagerness in his manner, a gleam of animation in his eyes which told that the communication had been of a nature to entirely change the current of his thoughts and distract them from everything of an unpleasant character regarding himself.

He folded and returned the letter to its envelope with trembling hands.

”Oh, Anna! Anna!” he murmured, ”why could you not have been always governed by your better impulses, instead of yielding so weakly to the evil in your nature? This makes my way plain at least--now I am ready to bid farewell to this home and all that is behind me, and try to fathom what the future holds for me.”

He carefully put the letter away into an inner pocket, then sat down to his desk and began to look over his private papers.

When that task was completed he ordered the butler to have some boxes and packing cases, that were stored in the cellar, brought up to the library, when he carefully packed away such books, pictures and other things as he wished to take away with him.

It was not an easy task, and he could almost as readily have committed them to the flames as to have despoiled that beautiful home of what, for so long, had made it so dear and attractive to him.

When his work was completed he went out, slipped over into Boylston street, where he knew there were plenty of rooms to be rented, and where he soon engaged a _suite_ that would answer his purpose for the present.

This done, he secured a man and team to move his possessions, and before the shades of night had fallen he had stored everything he owned away in his new quarters and bidden farewell forever to the aristocratic dwelling on Commonwealth avenue, where he had lived so luxuriously and entertained so elaborately the _creme de la creme_ of Boston society.

Three days later he had disappeared from the city--”gone abroad” the papers said, ”for a change of scene and to recuperate from the effects of the shock caused by his wife's sudden death.”

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