“Unopened—I do not understand.” Mona steadied herself against the foot of the bed and looked in a helpless way at Kitty. Her composure was gone, though she was very quiet, and she had that look of a vital absorption which possesses human beings in crises of their lives.
Suddenly Kitty took from behind a book on the shelf a key, opened the desk, and drew out the letter which Crozier had kept sealed and unopened all the years, which he had never read.
“Do you know that?” Kitty asked, and held it out for Mrs. Crozier to see.
Two dark blue eyes stared confusedly at the letter—at her own handwriting. Kitty turned it over. “You see it is closed as it was when you sent it to him. He has never opened it. He does not know what is in it.”
“He has-kept it—five years—unopened,” Mona said in broken phrases scarce above a whisper.
“He has never opened it, as you see.”
“Give—give it to me,” the wife said, stepping forward to stay Kitty’s hand as she opened the lid of the desk to replace the letter.
“It’s not your letter—no, you shall not,” said Kitty firmly as she jerked aside the hand laid upon her wrist, and threw one arm on the lid, holding it down as Mrs. Crozier tried to keep it open. Then with a swift action of the free hand she locked the desk and put the key in her pocket.
“If you destroyed this letter he would never believe but that it was worse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman to have written to her husband—or to any one else’s husband. You thought you were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without a penny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are only a pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot of herself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter.”
“How do you know what is in it?” There was agony and challenge at once in the other’s voice. “Because I read it—oh, don’t look so shocked! I’d do it again. I knew just how to act when I’d read it. I steamed it open and closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I’m not sorry I did it. My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to understand everything, so that I’d know best what to do. Though he’s so far above us in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own. That’s the way it is in new countries like this. We don’t think of lots of things that you finer people in the old countries do, and we don’t think evil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among the pioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty years old, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had to take each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr. Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life—not a boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed you in the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eat your meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as a matter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this out here—don’t you understand?”