She gently untied the discoloured ribbon and the letters fell apart in her lap as she sat back on her heels to look at them. From among them fell a bunch of flowers and lock of hair; the usual trivial mementos of greater values lost.
"The first ones are formal, but they were written happily; one can see that," said Wythie, as she unfolded a yellow sheet, handling its brown folds carefully, for age had made it very frail. "It's curious how the mood of the writer shows through the set phrases of that time."
"Nature and strong feeling break through stronger barriers than phrases, Oswyth, the second," said Basil, as he picked up the flowers. "Look," he added, "these flowers were waxed for their preservation."
"Yes. I imagine Oswyth Grey did that, for her lover could never have sent her waxed flowers," said Wythie, lifting the sheet which had held them for so long that Basil might replace them. "The letters grew more frank and assured as they went on—some day we will read them. Then there was one reproaching my little greatest aunt for her hardness of heart, her cruelty after so long, and then a last one bidding her farewell. It is quite pitiable. But this is the saddest thing of all." And Oswyth unfolded the sheet which bore on its outer fold the initials and the inscription that had lain on top of the packet of letters, like their epitaph as well as Oswyth Grey's. "See, she wrote this letter to him in reply to the reproach he had made her, knowing that he would never see it; it was never sent. Read it."
Basil read it. It threw no light on the cause of the lovers' parting, but it was a passionate protest against the distrust of her which her lover had expressed to that Oswyth, and a revelation of devotion and beauty of character that, after all the years, still palpitated with life. Oswyth Grey, the little Puritan, would not have poured out her soul thus had she not felt sure that no other eyes than her own would ever rest upon that paper.
"What a pity!" murmured Basil, gently folding the unsent letter in its brown creases again. His eyes were moist.
"She died not long after that the records show; he never knew. Isn't it a pity?" Wythie's lashes hid her downcast eyes as she fingered the papers absently. "I always felt that I ought to make it right to her, because I bore her name. I can't explain just what I have felt about her, though the feeling is strong. Yet the dear girl has been quite happy for more than a century; I suppose we need not feel sad about her now. Here is a stanza written to her, signed B. R. It isn't remarkable, but it is enough to prove that her B. R. cared for poetry when many were indifferent to it."
Wythie looked up, smiling to show that the moisture on those lashes meant nothing, and offered Basil one more yellow page. He took it and read:
If there were other like to thee, my loved one,
Then might I love that other perfect she;
But since the world holds naught like thee, my loved one,
How can I choose but at thy feet to be?
For, save in this, thou hast no fault, my loved one,
That to my love thou prov'st thy obduracy.
Basil returned the verse without comment, and Wythie tied up again the packet just as that other Wythie had tied it so long before. But with the great difference that for this Wythie happiness just within reach seemed to fill the shadowy attic.