“No, Magda,” he said, “I am glad you did not destroy it. I would rather meet with poverty in its direct form than know that you had done that thing; for it would have come to light some time, and I should have felt that in more ways than one I had lost my little girl.”
He was speaking to her now as he had done when she was a child, and one of his hands was smoothing her soft hair; but he was thinking of Frank, and there was nothing of the lover in his caress, though it made Magdalen’s blood throb and tingle to her finger tips, for she knew he did not hate her as she had feared he might.
“The will should never have been hidden,” he said. “Hester did very wrong. Do you know the particulars?”
“I know nothing except that I found it and you have it,” Magdalen replied, and briefly as possible Roger told her the substance of Hester’s story, smoothing over as much as possible Mrs. Irving’s guilt, because she was to be Magdalen’s mother-in-law.
Before he spoke of the letter left by his father, Magdalen had taken it from her pocket and held it in her hand. He knew it was the missing letter, but did not offer to take it until his recital was ended, when Magdalen held it to him and said, “This is the letter; it was in the box, and I kept it to give to you myself in case you should ever know of the will. I have not read it. You do not believe I would read it,” she added in some alarm, as she saw a questioning look in his face.
Whatever he might have suspected, he knew better now, and he made her lie down upon the sofa, and arranged the cushions for her head, and then, standing with his back to her, opened the letter, and read that message from the dead. And as he read, he grew hard and bitter toward the man who could be so easily swayed by a lying, deceitful woman. He knew Magdalen was watching him, and probably wondering what was in the letter, and knew, too, that she could not fully believe in his mother’s innocence without more proof than his mere assertion. Of all the people living he would rather Magdalen should think well of his mother, and after a moment’s hesitancy he turned to her, and said:
“I want you to see this, Magda. I want you to know why I was disinherited, and then you must hear my poor mother’s letter, and judge yourself if she was guilty.”
He turned the key in the door, so as not to be interrupted, and then came back to Magdalen, who had risen to a sitting posture, and who took the letter from his hand while he adjusted the shade so that the glare of the lamp would not shine directly in her eyes as she read it.
CHAPTER XXVI.
‘SQUIRE IRVING’S LETTER.
