“Yes. She told me. Oh, but why did he pretend? Why didn’t he tell her that he knew about the money?”
His face fretted into lines. He looked terribly distressed.
“Ah! that hits me hard. He wrote to me, Miss Harding—we had kept up a correspondence at intervals since our school days—and he had an exaggerated faith in my advice. His conscience was torturing him. He put the whole case to me. Should he tell her—should he confess? He hated the idea of marrying under false pretences. On the other hand he hated, as any lover would hate, to lower her opinion, perhaps to plant the seeds of future suspicions. Her silence as to her own wealth seemed to show that she had dreaded a mercenary love, that it was sweet to her to feel that he was in ignorance. He guessed that she was storing up the news as a sweet secret to be revealed to her husband. Well, as I say, he put the whole case before me, and I—I advised him to keep silent. He had wronged her in intent, but not in deed, for no man could love more deeply, more disinterestedly than he then loved her. Every word proved that. It was a wonderful letter, written straight from the heart—”
I interrupted in breathless haste:—
“Have you got it? Did you keep it? Can you find it now?”
To my unspeakable relief he nodded his head.
“I can. It’s not often that I keep letters, but this was an exception. I was naturally anxious about giving the right advice. I put the letter in my pocket-book, to read and re-read. Then, just the day before the wedding, I caught a chill, was in bed for a month with pleurisy. The first news I heard on getting up was—that she had gone! At once I thought of the letter, and was thankful I had kept it; I locked it away in my safe. I felt that some day, when she was found—Later on I wrote to her lawyers, and tried to bully them into giving me her address. I meant to send it to her myself, and force her to believe. But they swore that they knew no more than I did myself. Liars!”
“No! It was true. She was ill for months; in bed! absolutely cut off—”
“Ah, well!” He shrugged helplessly. “We were all at cross purposes, it seems. I believed that they were lying, and would continue to lie. I never tried them again. But the letter is there in my safe, and it is his best witness, Miss Harding. Where is she? How do you come to know her?”
“She’s in Italy. She’s coming home. To me. She’s my friend. We—we live together. Not here, but in the country. We share a house—”