“Yes. Take them, and, madam, if you will permit me to advise you, I strongly recommend that you lose no time in destroying them.”
The color flew to her cheeks at his tone, implying as it did the guilty nature of the correspondence. It terrified her to think that this man had it in his power to destroy her utterly, merely by saying a few words to her husband. Yet he could not have any such intention, else why should he advise her to destroy the evidence of her folly, her guilt? She took the letters with trembling fingers and thrust them into her handbag. “I will destroy them at once,” she said faintly, but very eagerly, hardly daring to look at him.
The further conversation between them was short. Mr. Brennan informed her that he would be happy to advance her any money she might need, pending the legal formalities attendant upon the administration of the estate. She thanked him with downcast eyes, but assured him that she would not require any. The thought of touching any of West’s money horrified her. Her one concern had been to keep the knowledge of their mutual love from Donald—this, she felt, was now accomplished. To the money she did not at this time give so much as a single thought. On her way up-town she made a sincere effort to analyze her feelings. Why had West’s death not affected her more deeply? Why had the most important feature of the whole affair been her desire to keep the truth from Donald? The answer came, clear and vivid. It was Bobbie. She feared the destruction of her home on his account. It was love for him that had caused her to repent of her promise to West to go away with him, even before the latter had much more than started on his way to Denver.
The thought pursued her all the way home. When she arrived, Bobbie had finished his luncheon and was just going out with Nellie. She went up to the boy and clasped him in her arms. “Dear little man!” she said as she kissed him, then noticed, in her sudden thought of him, how pale and thin he looked. “Run along now, dear. The more fresh air you get, the better.”
After the child had gone, and she was alone, she took the letters Mr. Brennan had given her, drew from her bureau drawer those she had received from West, and, without looking at any of them, proceeded to make a bonfire of them all in a tin basin in the kitchen. It seemed hard to destroy his letters. They had meant so much to her when she had received them. For a moment she was tempted to read them all through for the last time, but the fear that, should she do so, she might weaken in her intention to destroy them stopped her. Donald must never know—Donald must never know. These letters were the only proof in the whole world of her wrong-doing. She applied a match to the mass of paper with trembling fingers, and, with tears in her eyes, watched the flames mount and crackle, the sheets blacken and fall to soft gray dust.
In a short time the little funeral pyre—it seemed to her the funeral pyre of the past—with all her hopes and fears, her guilt and her love, had crumbled to a tiny pile of ashes. She threw them out of the window and watched them blow hither and thither in the eddying currents of wind. When she had closed the window, it seemed to her that she had also closed the door upon the past. Before her the future lay bright and smiling. She did not admit for a moment to herself that its brightness might be a reflection from Billy West’s gold. The very thought would have made her shudder. Nevertheless, the knowledge that one has half a million dollars in the bank is apt to lend a brightness to the future, no matter how clouded the immediate present may be.