Major Lane paused a moment, then went on:
Theo, I wrote to you ten days ago, but I have had no answer. I am dreadfully worried; I know you are in Birmingham, for I saw your name in a paper before I wrote to you. I have gone through such terrible days waiting for the postcard I asked you to send me. Write, if only to say you don't want to hear again of poor miserable
Pansy Jarvice.
"I suppose you will now admit that you know who wrote these letters?" asked Major Lane sternly.
"Yes—at least I suppose they were written by Mrs. Jarvice."
Theodore Carden spoke with a touch of impatience. The question seemed to him to be, on the part of his father's old friend, a piece of useless cruelty.
"And can you suggest to whom they were written, if not to yourself?"
"No, of course not; I do not doubt that they were written to me," and this time his face was ravaged with a horror and despair to which the other two men had, so far, no clue. "And yet," he added, a touch of surprise in his voice, "I never saw these letters—they never reached me."
"But of course you received others?"
Major Lane spoke with a certain eagerness; then, as the young man seemed to hesitate, he added hastily: "Nay, nay—say nothing that might incriminate yourself."
"But indeed—indeed I have never received a letter from her—that perhaps is why I did not know the handwriting."