"You want to see Mr. Dunbar?" he said.
"Yes, sir!"
"He is very much fatigued by yesterday's business, and he declines to see you. What is your motive for being so eager to see him?"
"I will tell that to Mr. Dunbar himself."
"You are really the daughter of Joseph Wilmot? Mr. Dunbar seems to doubt the fact of his having had a daughter."
"Perhaps so. Mr. Dunbar may have been unaware of my existence until this moment. I did not know until last night what had happened."
She stopped for a moment, half-stifled by a hysterical sob, which she could not repress: but she very quickly regained her self-control, and continued, slowly and deliberately, looking earnestly in the young man's face with her clear brown eyes, "I did not know until last night that my father's name was Wilmot; he had called himself by a false name—but last night, after hearing of the—the—murder"—the horrible word seemed to suffocate her, but she still went bravely on—"I searched a box of my father's and found this."
She took from her pocket the letter directed to Norfolk Island, and handed it to the lawyer.
"Read it," she said; "you will see then how my father had been wronged by Henry Dunbar."
Arthur Lovell unfolded the worn and faded letter. It had been written five-and-twenty years before by Sampson Wilmot. Margaret pointed to one passage on the second page.