“How could she wound him so?” the young wife sobbed, in bitterest indignation. “She did not love him; hers was a selfish passion—not true, self-sacrificing love. Ah! now I no longer pity her. She was not worthy of my Norman. Oh, Heaven help us—my child and me—to make him so happy that he will wholly forget her and the cruel stabs she dealt his generous nature.”
There came a light tap upon the door. It was her mother-in-law’s light step outside.
Thea pushed the old letter under the full draperies of her dress, and called out:
“Come in.”
Mrs. de Vere’s sweet old face, framed in waves of snowy hair, took on an expression of solicitude as she saw Thea’s tear-wet face.
“Oh, my dear! what is it?” Then, as she saw the scattered toys: “What, you have been weeping over the old playthings? Would you like to be a child again, my daughter?”
“No, no; it is not that, dear mother!” Thea cried, hastily. She stood a moment irresolute, with her little hand under the folds of her dress; then, going closer to Mrs. de Vere, she said, faintly: “I will tell you the truth. While looking through my old picture-books I came across a letter that I found on the floor and put away in my childish days—to destroy, I suppose, as my little scissors were with it. Then I must have forgotten it, and it remained there until now, when I read it, and—and—it gave me the—heartache,” sighing.
“A letter?” Mrs. de Vere said, uncomprehendingly.
“Here it is; but I suppose you read it long ago, mother;” and Thea put the letter in her mother-in-law’s hand, and turning away began to walk nervously up and down the floor.
Mrs. de Vere read it, and the past rushed over her mind.