"Blank Hotel, New York City, April 27th, 18—.
"My dear Miss Cavendish:—Our near blood relationship might warrant me in addressing you as my dear Emma. But I refrain, because you would not understand the familiarity any more than you recognize this handwriting, which must seem as strange to you as my face would seem if I were to present myself bodily before you; for you have never set eyes upon me, and perhaps have never even heard my name mentioned or my existence alluded to.
"And yet I am one of your family, near of kindred to yourself; in fact, your own dear mother's only sister.
"'We were two daughter's of one race,
She was the fairer in the face.'
Yes, she was literally so. Your mother was a beautiful blonde, as I have been told that you, her only child, also are. I am—or, rather, I was before my hair turned white with sorrow—a very dark brunette.
"If you have ever heard of me at all, which I doubt—for I know that at home my once loved and cherished name
"'Was banished from each lip and ear,
Like words of wickedness or fear'—
but if you ever heard of me at all you must have heard of that willful love marriage which separated me from all my family.
"Since that ill-omened marriage an unbroken succession of misfortunes have attended my husband and myself until they culminated in the most crushing calamity of our lives—the loss of our dear and only daughter in a manner worse than death.
"Soon after that awful bereavement our creditors foreclosed the mortgage on our estate at White Perch Point, and sold the place over our heads.