“Is all you need in here?” said he.
Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he took his light and left the chamber. Before leaving, however, he locked another door leading into the hall, so as to prevent the possible escape of the nurse.
As he entered Camilla’s boudoir his countenance became dark and stern; every gentle and tender feeling that his child had aroused now fled from his heart. He was now the insulted husband, the man whose honor was wounded in its most sensitive point—who came to punish, to revenge, to seek the proofs of the guilt he suspected. He placed the light upon the table, and opened his wife’s portfolio to seek for the key of her drawer, which was generally kept there. It was in its usual place. Lord Elliot shuddered as he touched it; it felt like burning fire in his hand.
“It is the key to my grave,” murmured he.
With a firm hand he put the key in the lock, opened the drawer, and drew out the letters and papers it contained. There were his own letters, the letters of love and tenderness he had sent her from Copenhagen; among them he found others full of passionate proofs of the criminal and unholy love he had come to punish. Camilla had not had the delicacy to separate her husband’s from her lover’s letters; she had carelessly thrown them in the same drawer. As Lord Elliot saw this he laughed aloud, a feeling of inexpressible contempt overpowered his soul and deadened his pain. He could not continue to love one who had not only been faithless to him, but wanting in delicacy to the partner of her sin.
Lord Elliot read but one of the beau cousin’s letters, then threw it carelessly aside. He did not care to read more of the silly speeches, the guilty protestations of constancy of her insipid lover. He searched but for one letter; he wished to find the original of the last one Camilla had written to him, for he knew her too well to give her credit for the composition of that cold, sneering, determined letter. He wished, therefore, to find the author, whose every word had pierced his soul like a dagger, driving him at first almost to madness.
A wild, triumphant cry now escaped from him, resounding fearfully in the solitary chambers. He had found it! The letter was clutched tightly in his trembling hands as he read the first lines. It was in the same hand as the others, it was the writing of his rival, Von Kindar, her beau cousin.
Lord Elliot folded the paper carefully and hid it in his bosom; then throwing the others into the drawer, he locked it, placing the key in the portfolio.
“It is well,” said he, “I have now all I need. This letter is his death-warrant.”
He took the light and left the room. Fifteen minutes had just elapsed when he entered his daughter’s chamber. The nurse advanced to meet him, the child and a bundle of clothes in her arms, and received the promised gold piece.