“A lady, sir—in deep mourning.”
“Did she leave any message?”
“No, sir.”
Having drawn the inevitable conclusion, Mr. Rayburn shut himself up in his library. He was afraid of Lucy’s curiosity and Lucy’s questions, if he read Mrs. Zant’s letter in his daughter’s presence.
Looking at the open envelope after he had taken out the leaves of writing which it contained, he noticed these lines traced inside the cover:
“My one excuse for troubling you, when I might have consulted my brother-in-law, will be found in the pages which I inclose. To speak plainly, you have been led to fear that I am not in my right senses. For this very reason, I now appeal to you. Your dreadful doubt of me, sir, is my doubt too. Read what I have written about myself—and then tell me, I entreat you, which I am: A person who has been the object of a supernatural revelation? or an unfortunate creature who is only fit for imprisonment in a mad-house?”
Mr. Rayburn opened the manuscript. With steady attention, which soon quickened to breathless interest, he read what follows:
VI. THE LADY’S MANUSCRIPT.
YESTERDAY morning the sun shone in a clear blue sky—after a succession of cloudy days, counting from the first of the month.
The radiant light had its animating effect on my poor spirits. I had passed the night more peacefully than usual; undisturbed by the dream, so cruelly familiar to me, that my lost husband is still living—the dream from which I always wake in tears. Never, since the dark days of my sorrow, have I been so little troubled by the self-tormenting fancies and fears which beset miserable women, as when I left the house, and turned my steps toward Kensington Gardens—for the first time since my husband’s death.