The date was unmistakably set down by the same hand that had penned the bold signature, “Thomas Wentworth,” and the bewilderment of the Earl increased as he recognized that here was no forgery, but a genuine letter antedating its duplicate.
“Is it possible,” he murmured to himself, “that a man has so little originality as to do practically the same thing twice?” Then aloud to the girl he said:
“Who was your mother?”
“I had hoped the reading of this document would have rendered your question unnecessary. Has a man such gift of forgetting, that the very name of the woman he solemnly married has slipped his memory as easily as the writing of the letter she cherished?”
“She was Frances, daughter of Sir John Warburton,” murmured the Earl.
“His only daughter, as I am hers, my lord.”
“But when Sir John wrote me coldly of her death, he made no mention of any issue.”
“My grandfather always hated you, my lord. It is very like that he told you not the cause of my mother’s death was her children’s birth.”
“Children?”
“Yes, my lord. My twin brother and myself.”