“After that all trace of you was lost, but I still kept on advertising, for missing people have a wonderful way of turning up to claim fortunes, and you see the result. Here is the letter, Sir Leonard.”
Leonard took the document and looked at it, while strange feelings crowded into his mind. This was the first letter that he had ever received from Jane Beach; also it was the last that he ever could receive.
“Before I open this, Mr. Turner,” he said, “for my own satisfaction I may as well ask you to compare the handwriting of the address with another specimen of it that chances to be in my possession”; and producing the worn prayer-book from his pocket—Jane’s parting gift—he opened it at the fly-leaf, and pointed out the inscription to the lawyer, placing the envelope beside it.
Mr. Turner took a reading-glass and examined first one writing and then the other.
“These words appear to have been written by the same hand,” he said presently. “Lady Cohen’s writing was peculiar, and it is difficult to be mistaken on the point, though I am no expert. To free you from responsibility, with your consent I myself will open this letter,” and he slit the envelope at the top with an ivory paper-knife, and, drawing out its contents, he handed them to Leonard. They ran thus:
“My dearest Leonard,—For so I, who am no longer a wife, may call you without shame, seeing that you are in truth the dearest to my heart, whether you be still living, or dead like my husband and my child.
“The will which I am to sign to-morrow will prove to you if you are yet alive, as I believe to be the case, how deep is my anxiety that you should re-enter into possession of the ancestral home of which fortune has deprived you. It is with the greatest pleasure that I make you this bequest, and I can do so with a clear conscience, for my late husband has left everything at my absolute disposal—being himself without near relations—in the sad event which has occurred, of the death of his daughter, our only child.
“May you live long enough to enjoy the lands and fortune which I am enabled thus to return to your family, and may your children and their descendants sit at Outram for many a generation to come!
“And now I will talk no more of this matter, for I have an explanation to make and a pardon to ask.
“It may well be, Leonard, that when your eyes fall upon these lines, you will have forgotten me—most deservedly—and have found some other woman to love you. No, as I set this down I feel that it is not true; you will never forget me altogether, Leonard—your first love—and no other woman will ever be quite the same to you as I have been; or, at least, so I believe in my foolishness and vanity.