"Janet Macleod. "P.S.--Mother will keep this; she has come to see me die, so it will be quite safe. She does not know I am married, and I have written outside that no one is to read it till you are dead. Ah, Paul! I wish you could have seen it. Forgive me, Paul--forgive me that he is not your son!" A greyness had come to the handsome face, and, as he folded up the letter methodically, his hands trembled. "How long?" he asked; and it seemed almost as if he could not finish the sentence. "Since the night of old Peggy's death. I suspected something, so I stole it." "You suspected!" he interrupted quickly. "What could you suspect?" Then he laughed bitterly. "I suppose you suspected I was the boy's father, and thought the knowledge would be useful. If I had been it would have been better." His hand holding the letter came down heavily on the mantelpiece as he rose in sudden passion. "My God! what a devilish revenge!" She gave a quick catch in her breath. She had been silent till now, but now it was time to begin--time to make him think. "You forget that she repented--that she gave up her revenge. That is why I said nothing, Paul. I am a woman, too, and I know how she repented. I did not dare to speak--to disobey her dying wish; who has a right to do that, Paul?--no one." "But the boy," he murmured, "the boy." "The boy will not suffer. If you die he will have his rights, as his mother wished. If he were really your son he would not have Gleneira till then, and you can look after him. It is not as if he were in want, dear." He sate listening, listening to that soft, persuasive voice, which had such a knack of following his every thought, and yet of leading them. "I had no right to steal the letters, of course," it went on a little louder, "but I am not sorry; for others might not have understood, and so the poor thing's repentance would have come to naught. Now, no one knows but you and I. You who loved her, I who pity her; because I love you, Paul, as she loved you." She came a step closer with wide-open, serious eyes, and touched him on the breast with her slender white hand. The faint perfume of jasmine which always lingered round her stole in on his senses familiarly, taking him back to many a past pleasure and kindness associated with it, and, half unconsciously, his empty hand clasped hers; and so they stood looking, not at each other, but into the fire. "So it is easy to fulfil her wish--her dying wish. You did her a wrong, Paul, in the old days, and you owe her reparation. She did not wish you to read the letter, remember; but that can be as if it had not been. Give it to me, dear! I would have burnt it before, as she would have wished it burnt, but I wanted you to know for certain what she had wished." Her small, white hand was on his, the paper rustled and seemed to slip from his hold while he stood, as if mesmerised, looking into the fire. It was all true--every word of it true.