"I'm sorry for everything, but of course it's too late now. The truest thing in the world is this: As you make your bed, so you've got to lie in it. I made mine wrong, but you couldn't help it. I wouldn't bother you now except for Rosa's sake.
"Your prodigal son who is eating husks now,
"PAUL."
Mary looked at the photograph—a pretty child with her hair over her shoulders and a smile in her eyes.
"You poor little thing," she breathed, "and to think you're my niece—and I'm your aunt … Aunt Mary," she thoughtfully repeated, and for the first time she realized that youth is not eternal and that years go swiftly by.
"Life's the strangest thing," she thought. "It's only a sort of an accident that I'm not in her place, and she's not in mine…. Perhaps I sha'n't have any children of my own—ever—" she dreamed, "and if I don't—it will be nice to think that I did something—for this one—"
For a moment the chill of caution went over her.
"Suppose it isn't really Paul," she thought. "Suppose—it's some sharper.
Perhaps that's why dad never wrote him—"
But an instinct, deeper than anything which the mind can express, told her that the letter rang true and had no false metal in it.
"Or suppose," she thought, "if he knows dad is dead—suppose he turns up and makes trouble for everybody—"