"Oh, oh, oh!" I cried, "surely you must be mistaken--he knew it was impossible--he had been refused by my mother three times--he went to India nearly a year before I was born--he--" Then Mrs. Deane said, producing an old letter from her pocket: "Do you know his handwriting and his crest? Do you happen to recollect once bringing me a note from at Ibbetson Hall? Here it is," and she handed it to me. It was unmistakably his, and I remembered it at once, and this is what it said: "For Heaven's sake, dear friend, don't breathe a word to any living soul of what you were clever enough to guess last night! There is a likeness, of course. "Poor Antinoues! He is quite ignorant of the true relationship, which has caused me many a pang of shame and remorse.... "'Que voulez-vous? Elle etait ravissaure!' ... We were cousins, much thrown together; 'both were so young, and one so beautiful!' ... I was but a penniless cornet in those days--hardly more than a boy. Happily an unsuspecting Frenchman of good family was there who had loved her long, and she married him. 'Il etait temps!' ... "Can you forgive me this 'entrainement de jeunesse?' I have repented in sackcloth and ashes, and made what reparation I could by adopting and giving my name to one who is a perpetual reminder to me of a moment's infatuation. He little knows, poor boy, and never will, I hope. 'Il n'a plus que moi au monde!' "Burn this as soon as you have read it, and never let the subject be mentioned between us again. "R. ('Qui sait aimer')." Here was a thunderbolt out of the blue! I sat stunned and saw scarlet, and felt as if I should see scarlet forever. [Illustration: THE FATAL LETTER.] After a long silence, during which I could feel my pulse beat to bursting-point in my temples, Mrs. Glyn said: "Now, Mr. Ibbetson, I hope you will do nothing rash--nothing that can bring my daughter's name into any quarrel between yourself and your uncle. For the sake of your mother's good name, you will be prudent, I know. If he could speak like this of his cousin, with whom he had been in love when he was young, what lies would he not tell of my poor daughter? He _has_--terrible lies! Oh, what we have suffered! When he wrote that letter I believe he really meant to marry her. He had the greatest trust in her, or he would never have committed himself so foolishly." "Does he know of this letter's existing?" I asked. "No. When he and my daughter quarrelled she sent him back his letters--all but this one, which she told him she had burned immediately after reading it, as he had told her to do." "May I keep it?"