"You are very generous!" said Christina dryly. "But there is only one way I can be sure of the end of all this. You know what is most important to me." Herrick, leaning against the banisters had got his eye to the opening in the valance again, and he could now see Christina with her hands in her lap facing Ten Euyck. "Have you got that letter?" she said.
Ten Euyck gave his breast a smart rap so that Christina, being so near, must have heard the paper crackle there.
"Very well," said she; "so much for the District-Attorney's mail!"
He stood up, and his voice croaked with triumph as he talked. "Christina," he said, "I have brought you that letter—it's the price of my professional, my political honor; it's bought with my disgrace, with my career! But I have brought it. I'm ridiculous to you, Christina, but who got it for you? Your friends, the Inghams? your admirer, Wheeler? your poor fool of a Herrick? your cherished jail-bird, Denny?—No, I did! This letter that I have here Ann Cornish fell ill guarding, for her vengeance. You stole and lost it. Your enterprising family broke into a post-office to get it back. But the despised policeman brings it to you."
"You got it by accident, you say," commented Christina. "Don't forget that!"
"Forget! I shall never forget the triumph of catching that gang, although I renounce it at your bidding. I shall never forget your message when the letter was barely in my hands!—
"'I know now that I am come of a family of criminals. My pride is in the dust, as deep as you could wish it. If you do not help us, if it must come out that I am tied to blackmailers whom you will catch and send to prison, I shall die of it!' Christina, can I forget that?"
"No," said Christina, "I never thought you could."
"And you will remember my answer, my dear! That I had the proof, the letter in my hand, to publish or to destroy, as you should choose. You haven't forgotten that?"
"No," said Christina again. "But the destroying, that's the thing! You'll burn it?"