"She would pity her from the depths of her heart. Yes, Abingdon, you are right. My uncle's wife has chosen her own path. She must follow it, let it lead where it will. I will write to Messrs. Sharpe & Smith now. But step into my dressing room with me for a moment, will you?"
In a corner of the spacious apartment to which he led his guest stood a large safe. Philip opened it. Within were a number of books and documents, but in a large compartment at the bottom stood a peculiar object for such a repository—an ordinary, leather portmanteau. He lifted it onto a couch and took a key from a drawer in the safe.
"This is one of my treasures which you have never seen," he said, with a sorrowful smile. "It has not been in the light for many years."
He revealed to his friend's wondering eyes the tattered suit, the slipshod boots, the ragged shirt and cap, the rusty doorkey, associated with that wonderful month of March of a decade earlier. He reverently unfolded some of his mother's garments, and his eyes were misty as he surveyed them.
But from the pocket of the portmanteau he produced a packet of soiled letters. One by one he read them aloud, though he winced at the remembrance of the agony his mother must have endured as she experienced each rebuff from Lady Morland and her husband's solicitors.
Yet he persevered to the end.
"I wanted a model for a brief communication to Messrs. Sharpe & Smith," he said, bitterly. "I think the general purport of their correspondence will serve my needs admirably."
As he closed the Gladstone bag his stern mood vanished.
"Do you know," he said, "that this odd-looking portmanteau, always locked and always reposing in a safe, has puzzled my valets considerably? One man got it out and tried to open it. I caught him in the act. I honestly believe both he and the others were under the impression that I kept my diamonds in it."
"By the way, that reminds me of a request from Isaacstein. As all the smaller diamonds have now been disposed of, and there remain only the large stones, he thinks that some of them might be cut into sections. They are unmarketable at present."