There was also a date.
"Let me look at that!" he said quickly. I gave it to him. He looked at the flower—a quick painful glance, but as he handed me back the card he laughed a little.
"It is a 'Forget-me-not,'" he said. Then in a musing tone he added: "Well, Ailie, I never have!"
So one by one the letters were burnt up, till only a black pile of ashes remained, in ludicrous contrast to the closely packed bundle I had taken from the drawer.
"Now burn the ribbon that kept them together, and look at the other paper."
I unfolded it. It was a will in holograph, the characters clear and strong, signed by Archibald Ruthven Campbell, of Inchtaggart, Argyleshire, devising all his estate and property to his son Roger, with only a bequest in money to his elder son!
I was dazed as I looked through it, and my lips framed a question. The young man smiled.
"My father's last will," he said, "dated a month before his death. She never knew it." (Again he indicated the upper room where his mother's body lay.) "They never knew it." (He looked at the girl's picture as it smiled up from the table where I had laid it.) "My brother Archie succeeded on a will older by twenty years. But when I lost Ailie, I lost all. Why should she marry a failure? Besides, I truly believe that she loves my brother, at least as well as ever she loved me. It is her nature. That she is infinitely happier with him, I know."
"Then you were the heir all the time and never told it—not to any one!" I cried, getting up on my feet. He motioned me towards the grate again.
"Burn it," he said, "I have had a moment of weakness. It is over. I ought to have been consistent and not told even you. No, let the picture lie. I think it does me good. God bless you, Alec! Now, good-night; go home to your Nance."