"Will you allow me to open it—or perhaps we will ask his lordship to do so?"
Derrick looked from one to the other and bit his lip.
"That packet is a confidential one," he said; "but"—moved by an impulse he could not understand—"I am willing that Mr. Clendon shall open it. It has passed out of my hands. I suppose I have no right to it," he added, rather bitterly.
"I made the proposition to save time," said Mr. Jacobs. "There is the packet, your lordship."
With a glance at Derrick, the old man took it and broke the seals slowly. There was no surprise on his face as he read the enclosures. Perhaps he had foreseen that which the packet contained. He read, in absolute silence, the two men watching him; Mr. Jacobs with a cheerful countenance, Derrick with an anxious regard; then presently, Mr. Clendon looked up. Now his face was working, his eyes were moist as he breathed, "My God!" and there was remorse, as well as a kind of solemn joy in the cry.
"You do not guess the truth contained in these papers?" he asked, in a very low voice, as his gaze met Derrick's.
"No, sir," said Derrick.
Mr. Clendon turned his eyes to Mr. Jacobs, but Derrick felt that the old man was addressing him.
"The lady who writes this letter, Mr. Jacobs, the Donna Elvira of whom you have spoken, is—my wife. We have been separated for years. The cause? Nothing that can cast a shadow of dishonour on her. I was wandering in South America when I met her; we fell in love, were married in haste. I was then a headstrong, hot-tempered, unreasonable youth; she—well, she was Spanish, and with a temper and disposition that matched mine. After many quarrels, we parted in anger. I went my way, a wild, desperate way; needless to tell you whither such a way leads. Wrecked in character and prospects, I decided to be quit of the world. I had thought of suicide—but God held my hand. Suffice it that I disappeared, that I concocted a false report of my death, and so made room for my younger brother, Talbot, to take the place in the world which I had rendered myself unfit to fill."
There was a pause, during which the old man strove for composure. Derrick began to tremble. He remembered Donna Elvira's strange tenderness to him, his strange tenderness towards her; and something vague and nebulous was growing out of the Marquess's words, a hope that, in its intensity, was more painful than joyous.