‘Beatrix!’ he cried, with a rush of gladness that almost stifled him. ‘Beatrix, Providence has sent us to meet here. I had sworn to myself to travel all over the world in search of you.’ ‘Why should you want to find me?’ she asked. ‘I thought there were no two persons on this earth with less reason to wish to meet than you and I.’ ‘I should not have presumed to follow you if I had not a motive strong enough to excuse my audacity. I have brought you this.’ He took Christian Harefield’s last letter from his pocket, and gave it her without a word of explanation. ‘From my father!’ she cried, looking at the address, and then tearing open the envelope with trembling hands. ‘In heaven’s name how did you come by this letter--from my dead father? You who suspected me----’ Tears choked her. She brushed the hot drops from her eyes, and began to read the letter. ‘“Sunday night, December 23rd,”’ she began, falteringly. ‘Why, that was the night before his death,’ she cried. ‘Read it for me. I cannot see the words. They swim before my eyes.’ Cyril stood by her side, reading the letter across her shoulder. He put his arm round her to hold her up, and she leaned against him trembling, hardly able to stand. ‘MY POOR CHILD,--When you open this letter you will be fatherless--a little loss, for I have never been a father to you in anything save the name. For the last ten years I have been a miserable man, too miserable to care for my own flesh and blood, all that was good in me turned to evil. ‘I loved your mother as women are not often loved, with an intense and concentrated affection that goes hand in hand with intense jealousy. I do not think it is possible for a man to love as I loved, and endure the knowledge that his love was unrequited, without having his nature perverted. My unrequited love engendered suspicion, evil thoughts, hatred of myself and the thing I loved. ‘By a series of fatalities, which I need not set forth here, I was led to believe your mother false and unworthy--a degraded woman--a disgrace to you as she was a dishonour to me. To-night I learn that she was innocent--that her only sin against me was a sin of my own creation. She might have loved me, as the years went on, had I shown myself worthy of her love by trusting her truth and honour. My jealousy made her life miserable, and my groundless suspicion drove her from me, to die alone, friendless, hidden in an Italian convent.