“Great heaven!” murmured Sir John, as the tutor’s note fell from his nervous grasp, “Am I blind to touch or truth? Am I at last to labour under the fact that my wife loves another! she who only some months since protested her innocence in such strains as to cause the most doubtful to stay alarm. Here is the ring, and there lies the note—the note of him who claims to be not only her tutor but suitor. Why did she accept the former or cause the latter to be written?”
“Then, the date! Just one month exactly before our marriage; and how I pined for it to elapse whilst another would eagerly have prolonged it. Oh, Irene!—false and low woman! Think you that any longer I can own you as wife or treat you with the respect a wife deserves!” Sir John, ever open to forgiveness, tried hard to master the dreadful spirit of jealousy which arrived at last at its highest point, if he could feel convinced that his wife’s correspondence with her tutor ceased after her marriage, believing if still it continued that other proofs of their dastardly plots would be forthcoming. Thrusting his hand again into the aperture from which he took the two tributes of his wife’s tutor, there appeared nothing to arouse further suspicion, save a Christmas card, written with the same bold hand. The lines were these:—
“Accept my warmest greeting, friendship, love,
Thou art my charming Irene, pet and dove;
Although another claims thee for a time,
I trust to call you some day ever mine.
Oh! pray for parting soon with fettered chains,
To live and move regardless of those reins
That bind your Christmas sprigs of worldly woe
To him, whom you have hated long ago.”