“Inclosed you will find the route you are to take, carefully mapped out, and the check that you would not keep before—my proud little woman! I feel sure that you can come with perfect safety alone as far as Kansas City, where I shall be surely waiting to receive you. Send a telegram naming the day and the hour when you will start. “One thing more, love—say nothing to any one of your plans; leave that to me, to explain after we are one. Annie, you _will_ not fail me. I could not bear it now, for I have set all my hopes upon you. I shall not rest until I receive your telegram. “Ever your own, WILL.” Everet Mapleson’s face was as white as that of the dead as he finished reading this epistle. “It is all true, after all,” he said, with blazing eyes and through his tightly locked teeth. “It _was_ he who enticed her away in secret, hiding her in that out-of-the-way place—literally burying her alive. I have been convinced of it ever since I found that ring with those initials—‘W. M. to A. D.’—engraved within it, and yet I kept hoping it could not be proved. So she went to him—foolish girl!—believing that he’d marry her and give up his money; and she only lived one short year! “Now Geoffrey Huntress’ strange resemblance to me is all accounted for,” he went on, after a fit of musing; “he is my father’s son and—_my half brother_, and to him will belong all Robert Dale’s fortune if he should ever learn the secret of his birth. Now I understand why he was given into Jack and Margaret Henly’s care. It would have been very awkward for the heir of half Jabez Mapleson’s fortune if that New Mexican escapade had leaked out. But I cannot comprehend how the boy became an imbecile—an accident, Mr. Huntress said—and I suppose those people got tired of caring for him and cast him off. No; that can’t be, either, for that woman seemed terribly upset about it. It’s all a wretched puzzle, anyhow. “Zounds!” he continued, with sudden energy, “the governor is a wonderful actor. He never betrayed himself by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, this morning, when we talked about this girl’s disappearance. I wonder what he will do about that money? Will he _dare_ keep it? or will he try to find the boy and make it over to him in some roundabout way? No; I do not believe he will ever run any risk of having that New Mexican escapade revealed. He couldn’t quite stand that, and my haughty mamma would never forgive him. He will keep the money, and say nothing. Geoffrey Huntress will _never_ get his fortune, for _I_ shall keep the secret that I have this day discovered closely locked in my own breast. Neither he nor my father shall _ever_ learn through _me_ that he is an heir of the houses of Dale and Mapleson.