Miss Elliott was silent, and but for the ruddy glare from the fire Gwen might have seen that she was very pale.
Getting no answer to her question Gwen remarked, "I see L. W., my father's initials, signed to one of them. Oh, don't burn them, Aunt Cam. Let me read them, too. Are they old love-letters? Oh, please."
She laid an arresting hand upon her aunt's which held another letter, but Miss Elliott thrust the envelope and its contents deep into the glowing heart of the fire, then quickly added the other letters, poking them down between the logs, and quickening the blaze by stirring the loose bits of paper. "They are only business letters," she said presently. "Letters from your father to my father. It is strange they were not destroyed before. They should have been."
"Why?"
"Because it is stupid to give house room to out-of-date things like that, to things whose chief interest is to the person who wrote and the one who received the letters." Miss Elliott gave an excited stir to the charred heap, now slowly burning and showing brown, curled edges.
"Still," said Gwen, "I'd like to have seen them. I know so little of my father, Aunt Cam."
"He was a noble man, a very noble man." Miss Elliott arose from her knees and pushed the hair back from her forehead with a nervous gesture.
"You never said that before. I—I always thought you didn't like him, Aunt Cam."
"I never knew him. At least I used to see him when he was but a lad, when I was home from school for the holidays. I was ten years older than your mother, you know, Gwen, and I went to China before she was old enough to marry. When I came back your father was—gone."
"I am glad he was a noble man. No one ever seemed to care to tell me much about him. I only know he was drowned on his way to Mexico. That was where he was going, wasn't it?"