“And I can equally be a daughter to you, dear Lady Wynde,” said Neva. “We shall be like sisters, I trust. And I desire to say that I hope you will consider yourself as fully mistress of Hawkhurst as when poor papa was here. I shall not interfere with your rule here, even if I may, until I attain my majority. While I live, my home shall be a home to my father’s widow.”
“You are very kind, my dear. All these things will settle themselves hereafter. I have now to deliver to you a last message from your dear father—a message, as I might say, from the grave. Your father’s voice speaks to you from the other world, my dear Neva, and I know that you will heed its call.”
Her ladyship drew forth the packet of letters, and laid them on Neva’s knee.
“You have there,” continued Lady Wynde, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, “the last letter I ever received from my dear husband. You may read it. You will see that he had a presentiment of his approaching death; that a gloom hung upon him that he could not shake off. That letter was written the night before his tragic death.”
Neva opened the letter with trembling hands and read it, even to the postscript upon the last page which had been forged by the cunning hand of Craven Black. Her tears fell as she read it.
“The inclosure—ah, you have not seen it,” said Lady Wynde—“is the letter alluded to in that last page of the letter to me. You see that it has never been opened. It is a sealed document to me in every sense, although, as poor Sir Harold often told me of his secret wishes in regard to your future, I have some suspicion of its contents. Your father requested me should he die in India, to give you this letter one year after his death. The appointed time has now arrived, and I deliver into your hands the last letter your father ever wrote, and which contains his last sacred wishes in regard to you. You are to receive it as an addendum to his will, as a sacred charge, as if his voice were speaking to you from his home in Heaven!”
She lifted the sealed letter, laying it in Neva’s hands.
The young girl received it with an uncontrollable agitation.
“I—I must read it alone,” she said brokenly.
“Very well, dear. Go into your dressing-room with it, and when you have finished reading it come back to me. I have more to say to you.”