My Darling—What has occurred to-day must be related with calmness, although my mind is in a whirl of excitement. The presentiment I felt last night that we were on the threshold of an important discovery has come true. A discovery has been made which neither you nor I could ever have dreamt of, and we have to thank Fanny for it. How wonderfully all the circumstances of life seem to be woven into one another! Little did I think, when I first met the poor, hungry little girl, and was kind to her, that she would repay me as she has repaid me, and that we should owe to her, perhaps, the happiness of our lives. I may be mistaken; I may be speaking more out of my heart than my head, more out of my hopes than my reason. But surely what Fanny has discovered will lead to a discovery of greater moment. It is, as yet, the most important link in the chain. We must consider what is best to be done. At noon, Fanny said to me:
“I want a holiday; I’ve got something to do.”
She spoke abruptly, and with great earnestness.
“You don’t intend to run away from me, Fanny,” I said, and immediately repented my words, for Fanny seized my hands, and kissed them, with tears running down her face.
“Run away from you!” she cried. “Never—never—never! How could you think it of me. I would die for you—indeed, indeed I would!”
I quieted her, trying to excuse myself by saying that it was only because she was keeping something secret from me that the words escaped me.
“But I’m doing it for you,” she said. “To-night I’ll tell you everything.”
Now, read how Fanny passed the day. I will relate it as nearly as possible out of her lips.
“When I went into Mr. Pelham’s room, yesterday,” she said, “in Buckingham Palace Road, I didn’t suspect anything at first. I didn’t like his looks, but that was nothing. There are lots of people I don’t like the looks of. I remained there while he threw away the letter, and while he drank and smoked. He was drinking wine, and he emptied three glasses one after another. It wasn’t till he got up and went to his desk that I noticed something—a twitch of his left shoulder upwards, just as a man does when he shrugs his shoulders. But Mr. Pelham did not shrug his two shoulders, he shrugged one—the left one. I only knew one other man who did with his left shoulder what Mr. Pelham did, and I thought it funny. While he was writing his letter he threw away his cigar, and took a cigarette, and the way he put it into his mouth and rolled it between his lips was just the same as the other man who twitched his shoulder as Mr. Pelham did. Well, as I walked back to Mrs. Holdfast’s house, I seemed to see the two men—Mr. Pelham and the other, shrugging their left shoulders, and rolling their cigarettes in their mouths, and what they did was as like as two peas, though they were two different men, though one was poor and the other rich. I couldn’t help calling myself a little fool when the idea came to me that they were not different men at all, and I said to myself, ‘What do they mean by it? No good, that’s certain.’ So I made up my mind to do something, and I did it to-day.