"Yours ever,
"Lionel Varick.
"I trust to your friendship to destroy this letter as soon as read."
Blanche read the letter once again, right through, then she held out the big sheet of paper, and dropped it into the heart of the fire.
For the second time that day she burst into tears, shaken to the depths by the extraordinarily complicated feelings which filled her heart and mind, feelings of horror and of pain—and yet of intense, immeasurable relief!
Then she pulled herself together, and prepared to act, for the second time that day, her part in a tragi-comedy in which where there had been two characters there was now but one.
CHAPTER XXIV
Dr. Panton's appointment at the Home Office had been for half-past ten, and, though there happened to be on this early January day an old-fashioned, black London fog, he had been punctual to the minute.