Surely Mark Alexander’s prophecy had come true, for that mysterious package had indeed proved useful to Virgie in this crisis of her life. Sir William was amazed, shocked, and moved to fearful anger at his sister’s daring wickedness.
She had robbed his mail bag for months, intercepting both his own and his wife’s letters. She had also been guilty of falsehood and treachery of the worst kind, hardening her heart against his sufferings, ignoring the agony of a beautiful young wife and mother, and all the while eating his bread, educating her children at his expense, and lavishly spending his money to gratify her own extravagant tastes and whims.
“Will, dear, you positively frighten me! What troubles you? Your face is terrible to look upon,” Virgie said, laying her hand gently upon his arm to arouse him from the stern reverie into which he had fallen.
He started at her touch, took the fair hand and raised it lovingly to his lips, while a smile, that was like sunlight after a tempest, broke over his face.
“I believe I was in a terrible mood, my darling,” he said, “but you will not marvel when I tell you all that I have read; no, I will not tell you,” he added, “it would be cruel to make you live over the past again as you would if I should reveal all my sister’s treachery to you. Suffice it to say that all our sorrow has been the result of a cunningly devised and—yes, a fiendish plot that originated in her brain. Under ordinary circumstances I should regard a diary as something sacred to its owner, but the few words that caught my eye as I picked the book up made me feel justified in reading more.
“But, Virgie,” Sir William concluded, sternly, “I shall never forgive Miriam Linton for the ruin which she wrought eighteen years ago.”
Then he read the letters, and his ire grew hotter and fiercer until he came to that portion where lady Linton sent the money to Virgie and advised her to “go away to some quiet place, where she was not known, and might be able to bring up her child in a respectable way, so that its future might not be hampered by its mother’s mistakes.”
At this point, his anger reached a white heat.
Sir William dashed the paper to the floor, his face one crimson sheet of flame, and pressed to his breast the woman he so passionately loved.
“My poor, wronged darling, how dared she write such horrible things of you?” he cried, in a shaking voice, “and to send you that paltry hundred pounds! What must you have thought of me, to be guilty of such a dastardly act, after taking away all the fortune that your father settled upon you? I wonder your love did not all turn to bitterest hatred. Oh, Virgie! Virgie! I feel as if I could not bear it, even though you are all my own once more,” he concluded, great drops of agony starting out upon his face.