"DEAR SIR,--I have great pleasure in informing you that your friend L. C. has at length entirely recovered. She is very much broken down, however; her hair is quite gray, and she looks twenty years older. She is deeply penitent and profoundly sad. She is to leave me to-morrow, and will join the Sisters of Charity. You will feel with me that this is best for herself and for all. I remain yours, very truly,
"OBED CHUTE.
"Capt. O. N. POMEROY."
Gualtier read these letters several times in deep and thoughtful silence. Then he sat in profound thought for some time.
"Well," said Hilda at length, with some impatience, "what do you think of these?"
"What do _you_ think?" asked Gualtier.
"I?" returned Hilda. "I will tell you what I think; and as I have brooded over these for eight months now, I can only say that I am more confirmed than ever in my first impressions. To me, then, these papers seem to point out two great facts--the first being that of the forgery; and the second that of the elopement. Beyond this I see something else. The forgery has been arranged by the payment of the amount. The elopement also has come to a miserable termination. Lady Chetwynde seems to have been deserted by her lover, who left her perhaps in New York. She fell ill, very ill, and suffered so that on her recovery she had grown in appearance twenty years older. Broken-hearted, she did not dare to go back to her friends, but joined the Sisters of Charity. She is no doubt dead long ago. As to this Chute, he seems to me perhaps to have been a kind of tool of the lover, who employed him probably to settle his forgery business, and also to take care of the unhappy woman whom he had ruined and deserted. He wrote these few letters to keep the recreant lover informed about her fate. In the midst of these there is the last despairing farewell of the unhappy creature herself. All these the conscience-stricken lover has carefully preserved. In addition to these, no doubt for the sake of easing his conscience, he wrote out a confession of his sin. But he was too great a coward to write it out plainly, and therefore wrote it in cipher. I believe that he would have destroyed them all if he had found time; but his accident came too quickly for this, and he has left these papers as a legacy to the discoverer."
As Hilda spoke Gualtier gazed at her with unfeigned admiration.
"You are right," said he. "Every word that you speak is as true as fate. You have penetrated to the very bottom of this secret. I believe that this is the true solution. Your genius has solved the mystery."
"The mystery," repeated Hilda, who showed no emotion whatever at the fervent admiration of Gualtier--"the mystery is as far from solution as ever."