Then she saw that it was not addressed to herself, but to Miss Darling Dalrymple, and was postmarked New York.
“How very, very strange this is, and how familiar the handwriting looks!” she cried with a quickened heartthrob, and she decided that in this case it was her duty to open her daughter’s letter.
She did so with nervous, fluttering fingers, and then she saw staring her in the face these words:
“My Darling Daughter: If I had not thought I was destined to perish in the cruel sea that day, I should never have given you the clew to find your proud mother who wrecked my life with her relentless scorn.
“If I had not been sure of death, I never should have intrusted you with those messages of remorse and forgiveness and love at which she laughed, perhaps, in her undying resentment against me. I could hope now that you forgot to tell her, for it might be better so.
“You are with your mother, no doubt, so I address this letter to her house. Oh, Jessie, darling, how I blundered when I gave you back to her! My heart cries out for you, my darling child, the only treasure I have in the world! I cannot give you up. Will you come back to me, darling? She has troops of friends, and does not need you, but I have only my dark-eyed Jessie.
“If she laughed and mocked at the tender messages I sent her when I believed I must die, never tell me of it, darling. I cannot bear the pain.
“Choose between us, quickly, Jessie, and come to me at once, if you can, at the Hotel Supremacy.
“Leon Dalrymple.”
The great, hollow, dark eyes devoured every word with surprise and joy, for nothing he could say against her mattered much now that she knew he lived, the man she had loved hopelessly through years of alienation and separation with the terrible barrier of divorce between their wedded hearts.