"Then you think I am this American woman, Miss Jenny—what was her name?"
"Regan. Yes, I know you are."
"How do you know it?"
He searched in his breast pocket, then in his side pockets, and finally in his cigarette case.
"Ah! Here it is. I put it in the cigarette case to protect it." He produced a small square of white paper, and held it before her eyes with a smile of triumph. "Ever see this before, kiddo?"
Hester's face went white, and all the strength seemed to go out of her body as she read the postscript of her own letter to Rosalie, the fateful letter that she had torn in two and thrown into the fireplace. By some whim of fate the fluttering fragment that had sailed to Anton's feet, after the curate's well-meant scattering of the pieces, was a portion of this letter, and contained, in the girl's own handwriting, the most damaging words of the epistle: "Please remember not to address me as Jenny Regan, but as Hester Storm!"
"Rather jars you, don't it?" he said as he watched her. "I suppose you'll say it isn't your writing? Want me to compare it with the note you sent me?"
"It is my writing," she admitted, "it's from a letter I wrote to my sister, but that doesn't make me a thief."
"Ah, it's your writing! Then you go under two names?"
"I may have had a reason for—taking another name."