"Since my son Marmaduke has chosen to deprive me of the possibility of an heir by dying--not even on the field of battle--out at Varna, I return the enclosed. I don't know why I kept it. To have a hold over the young man at bottom, I expect. Perhaps for other reasons. One doesn't often meet women of your description. Anyhow, I haven't.
"You can now claim your position and dowry, which my d----d cousin can very well afford to pay.
"Besides, you are worth providing for; more, at any rate than my Lady and Penelope, and I have done that. So I die quits; except for my son Peter. Why didn't he get cholera instead of Marmaduke? I could have spared him.
"Yours,
"Drummuir."
The enclosure was the copy of the marriage lines which she thought she had seen the old lord in the act of destroying as she had left the room.
Yes, across the middle fold the beginning of a tear slit the paper.
She sat with the letter in her hand until the cry of a child made her rise hastily and go to her task of motherhood.
[L'ENVOI]
"And you mean to say," said Peter Muir, when he had heard her tale, "that knowing this imp," he looked at the child she carried, "who is to turn me out, was on the way you burnt that paper found in Marmaduke's despatch-box? I give up. Thank God one does not often meet women of your description!"