Alice came in.
“Oh! Mr. Prescott, so you have heard it all. Poor Frank, have we not been cruel? and you always believed in him. But we will make it up to him now; won’t we, uncle?”
“My dear,” her uncle said, in a tone of mild despair, “another mystery has arisen in the course of this extraordinary circumstance, and I want you to tell me whether I or Mr. Prescott is dreaming. I was saying what a pity it was that Frank, knowing how I loved him, had not put aside his pride and written to me, demanding an explanation. Mr. Prescott asserts that Frank did write, and that I returned his letter unopened.”
“Oh, no, uncle; never. Not a line came from Frank. Do you not remember those three weary, weary days, after his return from abroad, when we waited—hoping, praying that Frank would write some line of extenuation, some prayer for pardon? Do you not remember, that at the end of the three days you said to me—‘It is no use waiting any longer, Alice, let us go abroad?’”
And Alice Heathcote’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of that sad time.
“No, no, Mr. Prescott, you are mistaken. Frank never wrote.”
“I am puzzled, Miss Heathcote, and of course credit your and your uncle’s assertion, that you never received the letter; but I must re-assert that Frank did write, for I saw his letter. It was returned unopened, in an envelope apparently directed, for I know his handwriting, by Captain Bradshaw, and sealed with his crest. By the way, it was the very seal on that envelope which, two years afterwards, Evan Holl recognised, and which led to the discovery of your grandson.”
Captain Bradshaw and Alice looked at each other in astonishment.
“This letter,” Prescott went on, after a pause, “must have reached your house, because it was returned in an envelope sealed with a seal kept in the house. You never received it. Who did? There must have been some treachery at work, Captain Bradshaw, and it is needless to point whose interest it was to suppress this letter; and to do it in such a way as to make it impossible for Frank, with any self-respect whatever, to write again. The exact effect, in fact, which it did have.”
“He never could have done such a thing as that, Mr. Prescott,” Alice Heathcote said, doubtingly.