There was more in the letter, much more. Erskine had exhausted language and repeated himself again and again in his effort to make everything very clear and convincing.
He had been skilful also in his attempt to make his mother see the woman of his choice with his eyes.
"She will appeal to your sympathies, mamma," he had written. "Although she is so young, barely twenty-six, she has been through much trouble and sorrow. She is an orphan, and has been for four years a widow. I need hardly add that her short married life was unhappy and so sad that she can scarcely speak of that year even to me. Of course it is an experience that I shall do my utmost to make her forget; and I need not speak of it again. I wanted you to know, dear mother, that you and I have much to make up to her. She was made fatherless and motherless in a single day, when she was a child of sixteen. I like to think of what you will be to her, dearest mother; a revelation, I am sure, of mother-love; for besides being so young when she lost hers, there are mothers, and mothers, you know, and I am sure Irene does not understand it very well; Do you know, she is half afraid of you? She has read a few of your letters, and has caught an idea of what we are to each other, and talks mournfully about coming between us! as though any one ever could! I have assured her that I am simply bringing to you the daughter for whom your heart has always longed."
It was at that point that Ruth Burnham had flung the sheets away from her and buried her face in her hands.
But ten days had passed since then, and she had long known, by heart, all that that letter could tell her.
And now, in less than another hour, they would be at home! her son and daughter!
She had not gone to New York to meet the incoming steamer, as had been arranged, or rather, as it had once arranged itself, quite as a matter of course.
"Think how delightful it will be, when you stand on the dock watching the incoming steamer, and straining your eyes to discover which frantically waved handkerchief is mine!"
This was what Erskine had said as he gave her one of her good-by kisses.
She had replied that she would recognize his handkerchief among a thousand.