Hester by Margaret Oliphant

Hester sat still after Harry had left her as if she had been frozen to stone. But stone was no fit emblem of a frame which was tingling in every nerve, or of a heart which was on fire with horror and anguish and black bewilderment. The look which Harry could not understand, which stopped him in what he was saying, and which even now he could not forget -- was still upon her face. She was contemplating something terrible enough to bring a soul to pause, a strange and awful solution of her mystery; and the first glance at it had stunned her. When she had assured him that Edward was coming back that night, a hurried note which she had received that morning seemed to unfold itself in the air before her, where she could read it in letters as of fire. It was written on a scrap of paper blurred, as if folded while the ink was still wet: --

"The moment has come that I have so long foreseen. I am coming home tomorrow for a few hours. Meet me at dusk under the holly at the Grange gate. The most dangerous place is the safest; it must be forever or no more at all. Be ready, be calm, we shall be together, my only love.