She was so absorbed in contemplation that she forgot the other "thing" which had fallen from the book, until, as she laid aside the triple portrait and began to resume her task, she saw it and pounced upon it--darted upon it like a serpent upon its prey--for it was a letter, and in a feminine handwriting.
A letter--soiled, its edges worn--it almost fell to pieces as she touched it. Yet it was, by its date, written but a few years previously.
The hand-writing was unformed. But it was unmistakably a love-letter.
"Dearest Victor," it ran. "I am longing to see you quite as much as you are wishing to see me. You say, if I cannot answer your question to me the other night you would rather not see me any more! It has made me very unhappy. You see, I am so young to be married. Then, if I did what you say, it would kill my poor mother, who is so very ill. But I do love you, Victor! I dream of you nearly every night. Sometimes you are Manfred, sometimes Childe Harold, and last night you were Laon and I was your 'child Cythna!' It was so sweet--we were lying side by side on a green hill, your eyes gazing into mine, and I seemed to hear some one singing 'Oh, that we two were maying'! Dear Victor, I must do all you ask: I could not bear not to see you again! It would break my heart!
Your promised wife,
JOAN."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Was the loving, foolish "Joan" the woman he had married? The woman she had seen coming down Haythorn Street as she drove up? Or was she "another woman" altogether?
She gazed fiercely at the sweet face in the photograph. It seemed to gaze blandly, calmly, back.
"Oh, God! What shall I do?" she wailed, grovelling on the floor in her despair. The anguish of discovery that another had reigned over his affections, and so lovely a rival, was almost unbearable. Still, selfish misery was soon extinguished by the greater, sterner passion which possessed her--her grim purpose of revenge, or as she chose to consider it, the just punishment of the one who had, she believed, poisoned her beloved.