How she blessed that forty-eight hours' detention by the fall of snow! But for it she would not have received this letter, which had been already delayed, in transit, for many days. She hurried to her room and tore it open. It was a long document, extending over many pages, and this is what she read:
CHAPTER XXI
"King's Bench Walk, February 28th.
"My dear Miss Ballinger,—I thank you heartily for your letter. It has brought the only great pleasure I have had for months. This has been a miserable time, but I hope and believe it is nearly over. Your letter is the first ray of pure light that has reached me; I hail it as the dawn succeeding the black clouds that have overshadowed me and hidden you from my sight. You will say the dawn might have broken sooner; that I have wilfully deprived myself of that light, which, had I looked, I should have seen on the horizon. That is true; and you who know me so well—better than any one, I believe—know my answer. I was too proud to go to you while this matter was pending, too sensitive as to what the world might say (and in that word I include your nearest relations) to appeal to you, to enlist your sympathy, to do aught which should force you into the position of my partisan. You have written, and my conscience is now clear in answering you. If I do so at some length, telling you my 'plain, unvarnished tale,' though it would seem tedious to many, I do not fear its seeming so to you.
"You have known me only as a poor, a very poor, man, struggling to make his livelihood, without influence, without prospects. My eccentric bachelor uncle, Mr. Tracy, my mother's brother, never gave me anything beyond a ten-pound note at Christmas. For many years I had every reason to believe that he rather disliked me than otherwise. I never sought him; I had certainly no expectation of his leaving me more than, possibly, a small legacy. His other nephew, my first cousin, Giles Tracy, was generally regarded as his heir; and but for his conduct I have no doubt he would have continued to be so, as he unquestionably was a few years since.
"It is just five winters ago that I received what I should call a peremptory request, rather than an invitation, to go down to my uncle at once. I obeyed the mandate, and found him in a state of great exasperation. His solicitor, Mr. Eagles, was with him, and remained in the room all the time I was there. I little thought of what importance his presence might prove to me hereafter! Giles Tracy had been gambling, and had lost heavily at Monte Carlo. He had not ventured to apply to his uncle to pay his debts, knowing, in the first place, that he would be refused, and, secondly, that his prospects for the future might be seriously impaired with the crotchety old man. But a rumor had reached Mr. Tracy's ears, by some means or other—I never discovered how—that Giles had been to the Jews, and had borrowed largely at usurious interest, giving promissory notes, payable when he should inherit his uncle's fortune. It was to discover the truth in this matter that he sent for me. He expected me to ferret out the facts and report them to him. I refused to do so. He then got very angry, and said he would leave all his money to a hospital. I said he could do what he liked with his money—it was no business of mine—but he must take some other means of learning the nature of my cousin's monetary transactions. Giles and I had never been cordial friends, but I was not going to play the part of a detective towards him. And with that, as my uncle now turned the vials of his wrath upon me, I left Mr. Tracy's house. I did not see him again for some time, but I have reason to believe that this—which was the only conduct any honorable man could pursue under the circumstances—far from alienating my uncle, was the real cause of his conceiving more regard for me. It was then he made the only other will that has been found, wherein he divided his property between me and my cousin. I had from him, in the course of the following summer, a note begging me to go to Tracy Manor; and during the last three years of his life I paid him several flying visits. Giles's name was rarely mentioned on these occasions; but he said once, looking at me in a marked manner, 'I have discovered all I wanted about that scamp, without your intervention.' What he had learned concerning him I know not, but that he did learn something, very much to my cousin's disadvantage, subsequently to the occasion I have named, is certain, and will, I fear, come out at the trial.
"I often found Mr. Eagles with my uncle, and one day, about two years before he died, he said to me, in Mr. Eagles's presence, 'I have cut Giles out of my will entirely, and have left all my money, as I told you I should, to a hospital.' I remember his looking at me very searchingly, as though he wished to see what impression his words made on me, and I remember also, distinctly, my reply: 'That is too cruel a punishment for the folly of youth.' '"Folly"?' cried my uncle. 'Do you call that folly, sir? I tell you he is a scoundrel!' If Eagles is forthcoming at the trial, he will remember that scene as well as the former one; he will recall my words and my uncle's.
"On my next visit to Tracy Manor, I heard incidentally that Eagles's health had broken down, and that he had gone to New Zealand. He did so little business in the country town where he resided, that to give it up was no loss. The loss was to Mr. Tracy, whose amusement it seems to have been constantly to make fresh wills, or add codicils to old ones. I have found any number of draughts and memoranda in the old gentleman's hand, but the will he professed to have made in the spring of 1888, leaving all his money to a hospital, is not forthcoming. I find notes of increasing donations to myself, beginning in January, 1886—the date of my refusal to comply with his wishes as regarded Giles. Then comes the will I have already named, made in 1887. But all this, of course, is worth very little as evidence that I did not influence him; the only evidence of paramount importance is Eagles's. It was difficult to trace him at first, for he left no family in England, nor any address, being uncertain where he would go. But he has been found, and his evidence will have been taken on commission, I hope, if his health prevents his returning to England for the trial.
"The last time I saw my uncle he was very ill. Though I did not know he was dying, I felt confident he would never really recover, and I therefore resolved to speak to him about Giles. I had some difficulty in approaching the subject, but I referred to the last occasion when he had mentioned my cousin's name to me, and I said I hoped he would reconsider his decision. 'No,' he replied; 'my will is made; Eagles is gone; I am not going to alter the last will he drew up, and which I signed eighteen months ago. I haven't altered my mind, in any respect, since then.' 'I am sorry to hear it,' I replied; 'whatever faults Giles may have committed—' 'Call them by their right name,' he interrupted, testily; 'call them sins.' 'Well, then, whatever sins he has committed, he is young; he has, probably, a long life before him; you brought him up to believe he would be your heir. It is cruel to cut him off absolutely, and without any hope for the future.'
"I traversed the same ground over and over again; I left the old man no peace; and at length I induced him to allow me to wire for an old solicitor, named Pringle, whom Mr. Tracy knew something of, from London. He promised me to add a codicil to his last will, devising the sum of twenty thousand pounds to his executors, in trust for his nephew, Giles Tracy, securing by this means that my cousin should not beggar himself by gambling. I did not remain in the room when he gave these instructions, for my uncle said he wished to be alone with Mr. Pringle; and he vouchsafed no hint of the main tenor of the will, which I then firmly believed devised the greater part of his fortune, as he had told me, to a hospital. Nor did I learn till his death, three months later, when this will was opened, that he had left the whole of his vast fortune, except this twenty thousand pounds, to me.