"But the money!"
"What money?" Something bitterer and crueller than the money had taken the memory of that away.
"Uncle Theodore's money. You see it is not mine—neither you nor I should keep it from Uncle Theodore's——"
"Oh! go, go; I cannot talk to you now. I will see you again—some other day—go!"
At last the look in Ann Walden's face attracted and held Marcia Lowe's mercy. She forgot her own trouble and mission; her impetuosity died before the dumb misery of the woman near her. Realizing that she could gain nothing more at present by staying, she placed the letter upon the table as she passed out of the room and the house.
For a few moments Ann Walden stood and looked at the vacant spot whence the blow had come. The restraint she had put upon herself in Marcia Lowe's presence faded gradually; but presently a sensation of faintness warned the awakening senses of self-preservation. Slowly she reached for the letter which lay near—no one must ever see that! She would not read it, but it must be destroyed. And even as she argued, Ann Walden's hot, keen eyes were scanning the pages that unconsciously she had taken from the envelope.
The date recalled to her the time and place—it had been written that summer when Theodore Starr had gone to the plague-stricken people back in the hills; after he had told her they, he and she, could never marry; that it had all been a mistake. How deadly kind he had been; how grieved and—honest! Yes, that was it; he had seemed so honest that the woman who listened and from whose life he was taking the only beautiful thing that had ever been purely her own, struggled to hide her suffering, and even in that humiliating hour had sought to help him. But—if what had been said were true, Theodore Starr had not been honest with her; even that comfort was to be dashed from her after all these years. She remembered that he had said that while he lived he would always honour her, but that love had overcome him and conquered him. Queenie had always seemed a child to him, he had told her, until the coming of Hertford, and the sudden unfolding of the child into the woman. He could no longer conceal the truth—in his concealment danger lay for them all, and his life's work as well. When he came back—they would all understand each other better! But he had not come back and then, when she had discovered poor Queenie's state, it was for Starr as well as herself that she sternly followed the course she had. She struck a blow for him who no longer could speak for himself—for he had died among his people.
"I loved him better than life," those were the words Ann Walden had spoken to her sister in that very room twelve years ago. The air seemed ringing with them still; "loved him as you never could have; but he loved you; he told me so, and because of my love for him—I hid what I felt. I could have died to make him happy, but you—why, you were another man's idle fancy while you lured Theodore Starr to his doom. The only thing you have left me for comfort and solace is this: I can now keep his dear, pure memory for my own, and love it to the day of my death."
Ann Walden looked quickly toward the chimney-place. There Queenie had stood shrinking before her like a little guilty ghost. She seemed to be standing there still listening to the truth, and avenging herself at last.
"Hertford is the father of your unborn child. You——"