If Jerrold's face had been gray before, it was simply ghastly now. He recoiled from the sight after one fruitless effort to grasp the letter, then rallied with unlooked-for spirit:
"By heaven, Armitage, suppose I did write that letter? What does it prove but what I say,—that somebody has been prying and spying into my affairs? How came the colonel by it, if not by fraud or treachery?"
"He picked it up in the garden, I tell you,—among the rose-bushes, where she—where Miss Renwick had been but a few moments before, and where it might appear that she had dropped it."
"She! That letter! What had she to do with it? What right had she to read it?"
Armitage stepped impulsively forward. A glad, glorious light was bursting upon his soul. He could almost have seized Jerrold's hand and thanked him; but proofs—proofs were what he needed. It was not his mind that was to be convinced, it was "society" that must be satisfied of her utter innocence, that it might be enabled to say, "Well, I never for a moment believed a word of it." Link by link the chain of circumstantial evidence must be destroyed, and this was only one.
"You mean that that letter was not intended for Miss Renwick?" he asked, with eagerness he strove hard to repress.
"It was never meant for anybody," said Jerrold, the color coming back to his face and courage to his eyes. "That letter was never sent by me to any woman. It's my writing, of course, I can't deny that; but I never even meant it to go. If it left that desk it must have been stolen. I've been hunting high and low for it. I knew that such a thing lying around loose would be the cause of mischief. God! is that what all this fuss is about?" And he looked warily, yet with infinite anxiety, into his captain's eyes.
"There is far more to it, as you well know, sir," was the stern answer. "For whom was this written, if not for her? It won't do to half clear her name."
"Answer me this, Captain Armitage. Do you mean that that letter has compromised Miss Renwick?—that it is she whose name has been involved, and that it was of her that Chester meant to speak?"
"Certainly it was,—and I too."