“If you insist I will read it,” he said, taking the letter reluctantly and opening it.
She sat watching him furtively through the tears while he read, saw the angry flush steal into his cheeks as the villainy of a fellow man was revealed to him through the brief, coarse, cruel epistle, and she mistook the flush for one of shame.
Then his true brown eyes looked up and met her tearful gaze steadily, a fine anger burning in them.
“And you think I wrote that!” he said, a something in his voice she could not understand.
“What else could I think? It bears your signature,” she answered coldly.
“The letter is vile,” he said, “and the man who wrote it is a blackguard, and deserves the utmost that the law allows for such offences. With your permission, I shall make it my business to see that he gets it.”
“What do you mean?” she said, wide-eyed. “How could you punish yourself? You cannot still deny that you wrote the letter.”
“I still deny that I wrote it, or ever saw it until you handed it to me just now.”
The girl looked at him, nonplussed, more than half convinced, in spite of reason.
“But isn’t that your handwriting?”