“There is a note for her up stairs, left by a woman who I guess came for work.”
That a woman should come for work was not strange, but that she should leave a note seemed rather too familiar; and when on going to the library he saw it upon the table, he took it in his hand and examined the superscription closely, holding it up to the light and forgetting to open it in his perplexity and the train of thought it awakened.
“They are singularly alike,” he said, and still holding the note in his hand he opened a drawer of his writing desk, which was always kept locked, and took from it a picture and a bit of soiled paper, on which was written, “I am not guilty, Wilford, and God will never forgive the wrong you have done to me.”
There was no name or date, but Wilford knew whose hand had penned those lines, and he sat comparing them with the “Mrs. Wilford Cameron” which the strange woman had written. Then opening the note, he read that, having returned to New York, and wishing employment either as seamstress or dressmaker, Marian Hazelton had ventured to call upon Mrs. Cameron, remembering her promise to give her work if she should desire it.
“Who is Marian Hazelton?” Wilford asked himself as he threw down the missive. “Some of Katy’s country friends, I dare say. Seems to me I have heard that name. She certainly writes as Genevra did, except that this Hazelton’s is more decided and firm. Poor Genevra!”
There was a pallor about Wilford’s lips as he said this, and taking up the picture he gazed for a long time upon the handsome, girlish face, whose dark eyes seemed to look reproachfully upon him, just as they must have looked when the words were penned, “God will never forgive the wrong you have done to me.”
“Genevra was mistaken,” he said. “At least if God has not forgiven, he has prospered me, which amounts to the same thing;” and without a single throb of gratitude to Him who had thus prospered him, Wilford laid Genevra’s picture and Genevra’s note back with the withered grass and flowers plucked from Genevra’s grave, just as Katy’s ring was heard and Katy herself came in.
As thoughts of Genevra always made Wilford kinder towards his wife, so now he kissed her white cheek, noticing that, as Mark had said, it was whiter than last year in June. But mountain air would bring back the roses, he thought, as he handed her the note.
“Oh, yes, from Marian Hazelton,” Katy said, glancing first at the name and then hastily reading it through.
“Who is Marian Hazelton?” Wilford asked, and Katy replied by repeating all she knew of Marian, and how she chanced to know her at all. “Don’t you remember Helen wrote that she fainted at our wedding, and I was so sorry, fearing I might have overworked her?”