“They have told me to-day that I am going to die; but I have known it for a long time. * * * Do for her what you would have done for me. Do not let him kill the sweetness and gentleness in her. Keep her away from him if you can; but do not let her know what I have suffered from him. I have arranged for him to care for the property I have to leave her, so that she may never feel that I did not trust him. He will surely guard what belongs to her safely. * * * Perhaps I was unjust to him; it may have been my fault; but if she can respect or love him I wish it to be so.”
“You see there is no question of lying here. I found this—in a trunk of mother’s, in the garret—quite accidentally, a few days after I came home. It was intended for Uncle Rodney or Aunt Julia and not for me.”
He was silent for a moment, staring at the page before him and refusing to meet her eyes.
She sat down and watched him across the table. Suddenly he laughed shrilly, and slapped his hands together in glee.
“I might have known it; I might have known it! This is delightful; this is rich beyond anything!” His mirth increased, and he rocked back and forth, chuckling and beating his knees with his hands.
“Zee, Zee, my child,” he began amiably; “I am glad this has happened. I am glad that there is an opportunity for me to right myself in your eyes. I could not have asked anything better.”
He began to nod his head as was his way when pleased by the thought of something he was about to say.
“Zee, the animus of this is clear. Your mother hated me,—”
“You needn’t tell me that! Her own testimony is enough, pitiful enough.”
“But the reason, the reason! I should never have told you. I have hoped to keep it in my own bosom,—my lifelong shame and grief. But your mother, your mother played me a base trick, the basest a woman can play. She married me, loving another man. And I suffered, O God, how I suffered for it!”