“The testimony, irrefutable, stands here before you. Raise your eyes from the ground, my lord, and behold it. If, scrutinizing me, you deny that I am your daughter, I shall forthwith turn from you and trouble you no more.” Strafford slowly lifted his gloomy face, prematurely seamed with care, and his heavy eyes scanned closely the living statue that confronted him. The sternness of his features gradually relaxed, and an expression near akin to tenderness overspread his face. “Any man might be proud to claim you, my girl, no matter how many other reasons for pride he possessed. But you have not come here merely because someone flattered the Earl of Strafford by saying you resembled him.” “No, my lord. I am come to return to you this document which once you presented to my mother.” She handed him a paper, which he read with intent care. It ran thus: “_I have, in little, much to say to you, or else one of us must be much to blame. But in truth I have that confidence in you, and that assurance in myself, as to rest secure the fault will never be made on either side. Well, then; this short and this long which I aim at is no more than to give you this first written testimony that I am your husband; and that husband of yours that will ever discharge these duties of love and respect toward you which good women may expect, and are justly due from good men to discharge them; and this is not only much, but all which belongs to me; and wherein I shall tread out the remainder of life which is left to me----_” Strafford looked up from his perusal, blank amazement upon his countenance. “How came you by this paper?” “I found it among the documents left by my grandfather, who died a year ago. It was sent by you to my mother.” “Impossible.” “Do you deny the script?” “I do not deny it, but ’t was written by me eight years since, and presented to my third wife, whom I married privately.” “Your third wife? Who was she?” “She was Mistress Elizabeth Rhodes, and is now Lady Strafford.” “Then she is your fourth wife. You will see by your own inditing that this letter was written in March, 1624.” The date was unmistakably set down by the same hand that had penned the bold signature, “Thomas Wentworth,” and the bewilderment of the Earl increased as he recognized that here was no forgery, but a genuine letter antedating its duplicate. “Is it possible,” he murmured to himself, “that a man has so little originality as to do practically the same thing twice?” Then aloud to the girl he said: “Who was your mother?” “I had hoped the reading of this document would have rendered your question unnecessary. Has a man such gift of forgetting, that the very name of the woman he solemnly married has slipped his memory as easily as the writing of the letter she cherished?” “She was Frances, daughter of Sir John Warburton,” murmured the Earl. “His only daughter, as I am hers, my lord.”