Then she went up to her room and locked herself in. It was a long letter; she turned it over and sat down to consider whether she would let Tuft read it first. But possibly there might be something about him which he was not to see.
She opened the letter.
Not a word from her brother, not a single word to her. The first that she saw was written in a strange hand, the next too, and the following after that, the whole thing, but in two different handwritings. There were some sheets of paper fastened together, some letters, a few loose scraps--not a word from Edward.
What did it signify? Involuntarily Josephine selected the least of all the papers, a little scrap of three lines:
"They destroyed my good name and I knew it not. For I knew not that I had it before it was destroyed."
On another scrap there were these words faintly written:
"Forgive them; they know not what they do!"
This delicate, flowing handwriting was of course Ragni's. Josephine began to tremble without knowing why.
Then there was a letter, written in another hand, the first words of which were in red ink. No signature. But as she read that Kallem was not to see it, she guessed it was a love-letter from Karl Meek, which Kallem must have found afterwards. What had Josephine to do with that?
Hastily she read the first words, but was surprised at his calling her "you," and that he spoke of a sorrow which he would have borne alone, but which now had fallen upon her too, a slander----? Had she been slandered?