"We ought to have been married, darling," said one of the later letters, dated from Overleigh, evidently after her marriage with Mr. Tempest. "I see now we ought. You said you were too poor, and you could not bear to see me poor; but I would not have minded that one bit—did not I tell you so a hundred times? I would have learnt to cook and mend clothes and everything if only I might have been with you. It is much worse now, feeling my heart is breaking and yours too, and Fate keeping us apart. And you must not write to me any more now I am married, or me to you. It is not right. Mother would be vexed if she knew; I am quite sure she would. So this is the very last to my dearest darling Freddie, from poor Marion."
Alas! there were many, many more from "poor Marion" after the very last; little vacillating, feeble, gilt-edged notes, with every other word under-dashed; some short and hurried, some long and reproachful; sad landmarks of each step of a blindfold wandering on the brink of the abyss, clinging to the hand that was pushing her over.
The last letter was a very long one.
"You have no heart," wrote the pointed, slanting handwriting. "You do not care what I suffer. I do not believe now you ever cared. You say it would be an act of folly to tell my husband, but you know I was always silly. But it is not necessary. I am sure he knows. I feel it. He says nothing, but I know he knows. Oh, if I were only dead and in my grave, and if only the baby might die too, as I hope it will, as I pray to God it will! If I die and it lives, I don't know what will happen to it. Remember, if he casts it off, it is your child. Oh, Freddie, surely it can't be all quite a mistake. You were fond of me once, before you made me wicked, and when I am dead you won't feel so angry and impatient with me as you do now. And if the child lives and has no friend, you will remember it is yours, won't you? I am so miserable that I think God will surely let me die. And the child may come any day now. Last night I felt so ill that I dared not put off any longer, and this morning I burned all your letters to me, every one, even the first about the white violets. Do you remember that letter? It is so long ago now; no, you have forgotten. It is only I who remember, because it was only I who cared. And I burned the locket you gave me with your hair in it. It felt like dying to burn it. Everything is all quite gone. But I can't rest until you have sent me back my letters. I can't trust you to burn them. I know what trusting to you means. Send them all back to me, and I will burn them myself. Only be quick, be quick; there is so little time. If they come when I am ill, some one else may read them. I hope if I live I shall never see your face again; and if I die, I hope God will keep you away from me. Oh! I don't mean it, Freddie, I don't mean it; only I am so miserable that I don't know what I write. God forgive you. I would too if I thought you cared whether I did or not. God forgive us both.—M."
John looked back at the cover of the packet. The Overleigh postmark was blurred but legible. June the 8th, and the year——. It was his birthday.
Her lover had sent back her letters, then, with those few harsh lines telling her she was wise in her generation. Even the last he had returned. And they had reached her on the morning of the day her child was born. Had it been a sunny day, with no fire on the hearth before which Lindo and Fritz now lay stretched, into which she could have dropped that packet? Had she not had time even to burn them? She had glanced at them, evidently. Had she been interrupted, and had she thrust them for the moment with her work into that drawer?
Futile inquiry. He should never know. And she had had her wish. She had been allowed to die, to hide herself away in the grave. John's heart swelled with sorrowing pity as at the sight of a child's suffering. She had been very little more. She should have her other wish, too.
He gathered up the letters, and, stepping over the dogs, dropped them into the heart of the fire. They were in the safe keeping of the flames at last. They reached their destination at last, but, a little late—twenty-eight years too late.
And suddenly, as he watched them burn, like a thunderbolt falling and tearing up the ground on which he stood, came the thought, "Then I am illegitimate."