‘It is a strange story,’ she said at last. ‘But I do not see that there can be any doubt. O Berbel, Berbel! What do you think there is written inside this little bit of paper?’
‘A few words to say good-bye to his son, I suppose,’ the woman answered.
‘If it were only that—’ Hilda did not finish the sentence, but her face grew slowly pale and she stared vacantly out of the window, while the hand that held the letter rested on her knee.
‘I do not see that it can be anything else,’ said Berbel quietly. ‘It cannot be a will, for they found everything about the property. What could the poor gentleman say except “Good-bye,” and “God bless you”? It seems very simple to me. Of course I knew that it would make the baron very sad to read it, and so I came to you, because I knew you could find just the right moment to give it to him, and just the right words to say, and it seemed wrong in me to keep it even a day. At first, I thought I ought to put it away and wait a year or two, until he had quite forgotten the first shock—but then—’
‘Thank heaven you did not!’ exclaimed Hilda.
‘Well, I am glad I have pleased you,’ observed Berbel in her sharp, good-natured way.
‘Pleased? Oh, anything would have pleased me better than this thing! It is dreadful, after all this time has passed—’
‘But, after all,’ suggested Berbel, ‘it is only the affair of a day or two, and the baron will be very glad, afterwards, to feel that his father had not forgotten him.’
‘You do not understand,’ answered Hilda with increasing anxiety. ‘We never knew why they killed themselves—it is an awful secret, and the explanation is in this letter.’
‘You never knew!’ cried Berbel in great astonishment. It had not entered her comprehension that the real facts could be unknown, though they had never been communicated to herself.