“It is terrible, _terrible_, what you have told me. To have written such things to one like you--in fact, to anyone on earth--seems to me unforgivable. It is the most inhuman cruelty I have ever heard of. You are fully justified in hating and despising the man who wrote such words to you.” “Then, why did you write them?” she burst forth. “And how can you sit there calmly and talk that way about it, as if you had nothing to do with the matter?” “Because I never wrote those letters,” he said, looking her steadily, earnestly, in the eyes. “You never wrote them!” she exclaimed excitedly. “You dare to deny it?” “I dare to deny it.” His voice was quiet, earnest, convincing. She looked at him, dazed, bewildered, indignant, sorrowful. “But you cannot deny it,” she said, her fragile frame trembling with excitement. “I have the letters all in my suit-case. You cannot deny your own handwriting. I have the last awful one--the one in which you threatened Father’s good name--here in my hand-bag. I dared not put it with the rest, and I had no opportunity to destroy it before leaving home. I felt as if I must always keep it with me, lest otherwise its awful secret would somehow get out. There it is. Read it and see your own name signed to the words you say you did not write!” While she talked, her trembling fingers had taken a folded, crumpled letter from her little hand-bag, and this she reached over and laid upon the arm of his chair. “Read it,” she said. “Read it and see that you cannot deny it.” “I should rather not read it,” he said. “I do not need to read it to deny that I ever wrote such things to you.” “But I insist that you read it,” said the girl. “If you insist I will read it,” he said, taking the letter reluctantly and opening it. She sat watching him furtively through the tears while he read, saw the angry flush steal into his cheeks as the villainy of a fellow man was revealed to him through the brief, coarse, cruel epistle, and she mistook the flush for one of shame. Then his true brown eyes looked up and met her tearful gaze steadily, a fine anger burning in them. “And you think I wrote that!” he said, a something in his voice she could not understand. “What else could I think? It bears your signature,” she answered coldly. “The letter is vile,” he said, “and the man who wrote it is a blackguard, and deserves the utmost that the law allows for such offences. With your permission, I shall make it my business to see that he gets it.” “What do you mean?” she said, wide-eyed. “How could you punish yourself? You cannot still deny that you wrote the letter.” “I still deny that I wrote it, or ever saw it until you handed it to me just now.” The girl looked at him, nonplussed, more than half convinced, in spite of reason. “But isn’t that your handwriting?” “It is not. Look!”