He knew it now in part, and the knowledge of it had aged him as ten years of ordinary life could not have done, making him feel old and worn and bewildered, and uncertain whether it really were himself upon whom this blow had fallen. And it had come to him thus: Mrs. Barrett had brought her grandson a fanciful whistle, of which he was very fond, and which, since Edith’s illness, could not be found. “I wants my fissle danmusser brought me,” Arthur said to his father, who was amusing him in the nursery one day, the fourth after Edith had banished him from her room and bidden him stay away until she sent for him. “I wants my _fissle_,” the child kept saying, and then the search for it commenced again, and Mary, the nurse, suddenly remembered having seen it last on the day when her mistress was taken sick. “She had Arthur in her lap, and might have put it in her pocket. She sometimes did so,” she said. “What dress did she have on?” the colonel asked, and on being told went himself to the closet where the cashmere wrapper was hanging. The missing toy was there, and also the letter, which he drew out with the whistle and held a moment in his hand, wondering what it contained, and why it had never reached him. “Col. Howard Schuyler, Oakwood,” was the direction in Edith’s handwriting, and by that he knew that it was written years ago when he was in England, and his wonder increased as to the cause of its having been so long withheld and not destroyed. Had Edith written it, intending to send it to him, and then changed her mind, and if so, why? he asked himself as he stood turning it over in his hand, and then there flashed upon him a remembrance of the time when she said he did not know _all_ about that early love affair of hers, and he felt convinced that the _all_ was contained in that soiled, yellow letter. And if so, should he read it? Ought he to read it? he questioned, as, having given the toy to Arthur, he went to his own private room to be alone and think. Never since Edith came to Hampstead had there been the slightest allusion to that _affaire du cœur_ to which she had seemed to attach so much importance, and he had not the least idea _who_ the young man was or where he had lived and died. Possibly it was all here in the letter, which he laid down and took up again three times before deciding to read it. And when at last he did open it and glanced at the heading, “Caledonia St., June 20th, 18—. Col. Howard Schuyler: Dear Sir,” he would not for a moment let his eye go any further, but held it fast on the “Dear Sir,” while he pondered again his right to read the letter. Then his eye wandered a little and caught a word here and there, and lighted at last on the names “Abelard Lyle” and “Rev. Mr. Calvert,” and _then_ he began at the beginning and read every word twice, to be sure there was no mistake, while his heart seemed to stop beating, and he tore off both cravat and collar in order to breathe more freely.