"Have you any letters of his?" asked the Colonel.
"I had a great many, sir," said she, "but I have not kept them all."
"Have you one?" said the Colonel, sternly.
"Oh yes, sir," said Lucy, "I think I must have nearer twenty; but what good will they be?" said she, affecting simplicity.
"Why, my dear madam," said Monckton, "Colonel Clifford is quite right; the handwriting may not tell you anything, but surely his own father knows it. I think he is offering you a very fair test. I must tell you plainly that if you don't produce the letters you say you possess, I shall regret having put myself forward in this matter at all."
"Gently, sir," said the Colonel; "she has not refused to produce them."
Lucy put her hand in her pocket and drew out a packet of letters, but she hesitated, and looked timidly at Monckton, after his late severity. "Am I bound to part with them?"
"Certainly not," said Monckton, "but you can surely trust them for a minute to such a man as Colonel Clifford. I am of opinion," said he, "that since you can not be confronted with this gentleman's son (though that is no fault of yours), these letters (by-the-bye, it would have been as well to show to me,) ought now at once to be submitted to Colonel Clifford, that he may examine both the contents and the handwriting; then he will know whether it is his son or not; and probably as you are fair with him he will be fair with you and tell you the truth."
Colonel Clifford took the letters and ran his eye hastily over two or three; they were filled with the ardent protestations of youth, and a love that evidently looked toward matrimony, and they were written and signed in a handwriting he knew as well as his own.
He said, solemnly, "These letters are written and were sent to Miss Lucy
Muller by my son, Walter Clifford." Then, almost for the first time in
his life, he broke down, and said, "God forgive him; God help him and me.
The honor of the Cliffords is an empty sound."