Were they actual letters, Maurice wondered, or only scraps of worthless paper which her distraught fancy had invested with meaning and importance? Had she hidden her lover’s letters here in the days when her mind was bright and clear, or had she strayed hither in the cunning of madness, to secrete the maniac’s treasures of straws and shreds and discarded scraps of paper? He knelt beside the cradle as she had knelt, and turned out the little sheets and blankets, the small down pillows. Yes; there were letters under the mattress, a small packet of letters written in rusty ink on discoloured paper, tied with a faded ribbon. ‘These may be worth something in the way of evidence,’ he said to himself. He read them one after another as he knelt there. They told the old story of deathless love doomed to die, of bright hopes never to blossom into reality. They all began ‘My beloved wife,’ they were all signed ‘Your devoted husband, George Penwyn.’ They were all addressed on the cover, which was an integral part of each letter, ‘Miss Muriel Trevanard, Borcel End, near Seacomb.’ There could be no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom the letters had been written. There could be no doubt as to the writer’s recognition of that person as his lawful wife. ‘My Muriel, my darling wife,’ occurred many times in the letters. Nor was this all—in these letters, written in all love and confidence, George Penwyn made frequent allusion to the motives which had led to his secret marriage. His whole mind was here laid bare, his hope of the Squire’s relenting in time to come, his plans for the future, his intention to declare his marriage at any hazard, immediately upon his return to England, his willingness to face poverty, if need were, with Muriel. ‘But I am not without the hope,’ he wrote in one of the later letters, ‘that my absence from England for two or three years will have a good effect upon my father’s feelings towards me. He is sore now on account of my having neglected what he was pleased to consider a grand opportunity of enlarging and consolidating the Penwyn Estate. But I know that in his heart he loves me best of all his sons, and that it would lacerate that heart to disinherit me. Time will blunt the edge of his angry feelings, and when I come back, perhaps with some little distinction as a soldier, he will be inclined to look leniently upon my choice.’ In another letter he hinted at the possible arising of circumstances which would oblige Muriel to leave her home.