For an instant the proud woman hesitated, then quickly unclasping the ear-rings and the pin, she laid them in Jerrie's lap.
"You are welcome to your property if it is yours, I am sure," she said, and was about to leave the room.
But her husband kept her back.
"No, Dolly," he said. "You must stay, and hear, and know. It concerns us all."
As he had closed the door and stood against it, she had no alternative except to stay, but she walked to the window and stood with her back to them all, while Marian put into English and read, that message from the dead.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE LETTERS.
THERE were four of them—two in Arthur's handwriting; one directed to Mrs. Arthur Tracy, Wiesbaden, postmarked Liverpool; one to Marguerite Heinrich, Wiesbaden, postmarked Shannondale; one in a strange handwriting to Arthur Tracy, if living, and one to Arthur Tracy's friends, if he were dead, or incapable of understanding it.
And it was this last which Marian read; for as Arthur was living, she felt that with his letters strangers had nothing to do. The letter to the friends, which had evidently been written at intervals, as the writer's strength would permit, was as follows: