Morrow winced, and drew a long breath. Then resolutely he plunged into the task before him.
“Emily, don’t think that I want to pry, either, but if I am to help you I must see that letter. If you trust me and believe in my friendship, let me see it. Perhaps I may be able to discover the key in the first word or two, and then you can decipher it for yourself. You understand, I don’t wish you to show it to me unless you really have confidence in me, unless you are sure that there is nothing in it which one who has your welfare and peace of mind at heart should not see.”
He waited for her reply with a suffocating feeling as if a hand were clutching at his throat. A hot wave of shame, of fierce repugnance and self-contempt at the rôle he was forced to play, surged up within him, but he could not go back now. The die was cast.
She looked at him––a long, searching look, her childlike eyes dark with troubled indecision. At length they cleared slowly and she smiled, a faint, pathetic smile, which wrung his heart. Then she rose without a word, and left the room.
It seemed to him that an interminable period of time passed before he heard her light, returning footsteps descending the stairs. A wild desire to flee assailed him––to efface himself before her innocent confidence was betrayed.
Emily Brunell came straight to him, and placed the letter in his hands.
“There can be nothing in this letter which could harm my father, if all the world read it,” she said simply. “He is good and true; he has not an enemy on earth. It can be only a private business communication, at the most. My father’s life is an open book; no discredit could come to him. Yet if there was anything in the cryptic message written here which others, not knowing him as I do, might misjudge, I am not afraid that you will. You see, I do believe in your friendship, Mr. Morrow; I am proving my faith in you.”