He looked quickly at her, and guessing of what he was thinking, she rejoined:
“Don’t imagine for a moment that I distrust your mother. I know she was innocent and I hate the woman who breathed the vile slander against her.”
“Hush, Magda, that woman is Frank’s mother,” Roger said, gently, and Magdalen replied:
“I know she is, and your sister-in-law. I did not think of the relationship when I spoke, or suppose you would care.”
She either did not or would not understand him, and she went on to speak of Jessie and the man who had been her ruin.
“Grey,” she repeated, “Arthur Grey! It surely cannot be Alice’s father?”
Roger did not know. He had never thought of that. “I never saw him,” he said, “and never wish to see him or his. I could not treat him civilly. There is more about him here in mother’s letter. She loved him with a woman’s strange infatuation, and her love gives a soft coloring to what she has written. I have never shown it to a human being, but I want you to read it, Magda, or rather let me read it to you.”
He was not angry with her, Magdalen knew, and she felt as if a great burden had been lifted from her as she listened to the letter written thirty years before.
CHAPTER XXVII.
JESSIE’S LETTER.
