“And they are at Hawkhurst now?” he said, in a voice so altered that Atkins hardly recognized it.
“No; they have been away for a month.”
“You understand that all these charges are not proved against Lady Wynde?” said Sir Harold. “I shall take my wife back again, Atkins, if she will come, and I will stand between her and the censure of a gossipping world.”
“Did you write from India the night before you disappeared, enjoining your daughter by her love for you to marry the son of Craven Black?” demanded Atkins abruptly.
“No; how should I? I don’t know Craven Black, nor his son.”
Atkins went to his desk, and took out a letter.
“Read that, Sir Harold,” he said, returning and presenting it to the baronet. “Lady Wynde gave that letter to Miss Wynde, telling her that it was your last letter to your daughter, written upon the eve of your supposed death.”
Sir Harold read the letter to the very end, an awful sternness gathering on his countenance. The tender epithets by which he had called his daughter, his particular modes of speech, and his own phraseology, in that skillfully forged letter staggered him.
“I never wrote it,” he said briefly. “It is a forgery!”
“Of course. I knew that. But Lady Wynde gave it to Miss Neva, declaring it to be your last letter.”