Your fond lover,
James Leigh Wallace.
Kitty looked at her companions in wide-eyed astonishment. “James Leigh Wallace,” she repeated. “Who could that be?”
“Leigh Wallace’s father,” Rodgers replied. “I knew the old man. But—” he paused, “that James Leigh Wallace married Colonel Holt’s sister, Anne Holt.”
Craige completed his examination of old receipts and retied the bundle. “Do you suppose, Kitty, that your aunt could have been secretly married?” he asked.
For answer Kitty held up a small object and a newspaper clipping which she had taken a second before from the envelope containing the love letter.
“It is a withered rose,” she said softly, holding it out in the palm of her hand. “And this—” she opened the clipping—“the notice of the marriage in San Francisco of Anne Holt to James Leigh Wallace, on April 1, 1869.” She looked up in wonder. “See, here at the bottom of the clipping is written one word in Aunt Susan’s handwriting—‘jilted!’”
Craige was the first to speak.
“It is not surprising that Miss Susan Baird hated young Leigh Wallace,” he remarked quietly. “She was not the type of woman to forgive an injury or forget an insult.”