“No. Not that.”
“And you can’t tell me who she was?”
“Yes; but not just now. Try to be patient for a little, Mrs. Blair.”
“Very well. Your judgment is best, doubtless. Of course you know whose hand wrote the body of that letter?”
“Yes; try not to think of it,” advised Kent. “It isn’t nearly so ugly as it seems.”
She looked at him with her straight, fearless, wistful glance.
“He had left me nothing to love,” she said sadly; “but to find disgrace and shame even to the end of his life! That is hard. That it should have been my husband who gave the thing most precious to me to another woman! But why did he write the letter to Preston Jax for her to sign?”
Chester Kent shook his head.
[CHAPTER XIX—THE STRANGE TRYST]
Midnight found Kent in the throes of literary effort. He was striving to compose a letter to Sedgwick that should, in turn, compose the recipient’s perturbed feelings. It concluded, with some acerbity: