Something in Miss Morton’s expression went to the girl’s heart, and she added impulsively:
“I know it wasn’t anything that affects the case at all, and if you want to refuse us, you may.”
“I’d rather not tell you,” said Miss Morton, and a far-away look came into her strange eyes; “but since you have shown confidence in me, I prefer to return it.”
She took Kitty’s hand in hers, and from the gentle touch the girl was sure that whatever was the nature of the coming confidence, it was not that of a guilty conscience.
“As you know, Kitty,” she began, addressing the girl, though she glanced at Rob occasionally, “many years ago I was betrothed to Richard Van Norman. We foolishly allowed a trifling quarrel to separate us for life. I will not tell you the story of that now,—though I will, some time, if you care to hear it. But we were both quick-tempered, and the letters that passed between us at that time were full of hot, angry, unconsidered words. They were letters such as no human beings ought to have written to each other. Perhaps it was because of their exceeding bitterness, which we read and reread, that we never made up that quarrel, though neither of us ever loved any one else, or ceased to love the other. At the death of Richard Van Norman, two years or more ago, I burned his letters which I had kept so long, and I wrote to Madeleine, asking her to return mine to me if they should be found among her uncle’s papers.”
“Dear Miss Morton,” said Kitty, “don’t tell any more if it pains you. We withdraw our request, don’t we, Rob?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Fessenden heartily; “forgive us, Miss Morton, for what is really an intrusion, and an unwarrantable one.”
“I want to tell you a little more,” Miss Morton resumed, “and afterward I’ll tell you why I’ve told it. Madeleine replied with a most kind letter, saying she had not found the letters, but should she ever do so, she would send them to me. About a year ago, she wrote and asked me to come here to see her. I came, thinking she had found those letters. She had not, but she had found her uncle’s diary, which disclosed his feelings toward me, both before and after our quarrel, and she told me then she intended to leave this place to me in her will, because she thought it ought to be mine. Truth to tell, I didn’t take much interest in this bequest, for I supposed the girl would long outlive me. But I had really no desire for the house without its master, and though I didn’t tell her so, I would rather have had the letters which I hoped she had found, than the news of her bequest.”
“Why did you want the letters so much, Miss Morton?” asked Kitty.
“Because, my dear, they were a disgrace to me. They would be a disgrace to any woman alive. You, my child, with your gentle disposition, can’t understand what dreadful cruelty an angry woman can be guilty of on paper. Well, again Madeleine told me she would give me the letters if they ever appeared, and I went home. I didn’t hear from her again till shortly before her wedding, when she wrote me that the letters had been found in a secret drawer of Richard’s old desk. She invited me to come to her wedding, and said that she would then give me the letters. Of course I came, and that afternoon that I arrived she told me they were in her desk, and she would give them to me next morning. I was more than impatient for them,—I had waited forty years for them,—but I couldn’t trouble her on her wedding eve. And then—when—when she went away from us, without having given them into my possession, I was so afraid they would fall into other hands, that I went in search of them. I found them in her desk, I took them to my room and burned them without reading them. And that is the true story of the burned papers. I did look over a memorandum book, thinking it might tell where they were. But right after that I found the letters themselves in the next compartment, and I took them. They were mine.”