"Her papers are here--" As he spoke, Craige went over to a table and pulling out one of the drawers, carried it back to the sofa and put it down by Kitty. "Hereafter I will keep all Susan's papers in my office vault, now that I know some one is vitally interested in gaining possession of them." "Have you looked them over?" questioned Rodgers. Craige nodded assent. "They are receipted bills for taxes, marketing, and so forth. See, Kitty," holding up a bundle neatly tied with red tape. "Your aunt was very methodical." "She was indeed," Kitty sighed as she untied one of the bundles. "Suppose we each take a package and run through it." Silence prevailed while the packages were being opened and gone over with a thoroughness which omitted nothing. Kitty's nimble fingers made quicker work of the knotted red tape and therefore to her fell the last bundle in the drawer. As she turned over the commonplace receipted bills, most of them for groceries and coal, she thought bitterly of the frugality which she and her aunt had needlessly practiced, and of the years she had spent in denying herself pleasures which the average American girl accepts, not as luxuries, but as necessities. Expert bank officials had estimated the negotiable securities and money left by her aunt as totalling over eight hundred thousand dollars--nearly a million--and her aunt had lived a life of genteel poverty during all the years that Kitty could remember. As Kitty sorted the bills in her lap, a small envelope, yellow and worn with age, tumbled out. She opened it and, unfolding the old-fashioned note paper, read the cramped penmanship with some difficulty. "This is evidently a love letter addressed to Aunt Susan," she exclaimed. "Listen," and she read aloud: RICHMOND, VA., April 1, 1867. MY DARLING SUSAN: I have called upon your mother and disclosed my affection for you, and she has graciously given me permission to marry you. I hope that I may never meet with your disapprobation. Transported with joy and expectation, I am Your fond lover, JAMES LEIGH WALLACE. Kitty looked at her companions in wide-eyed astonishment. "James Leigh Wallace," she repeated. "Who could that be?" "Leigh Wallace's father," Rodgers replied. "I knew the old man. But--" he paused, "that James Leigh Wallace married Colonel Holt's sister, Anne Holt." Craige completed his examination of old receipts and retied the bundle. "Do you suppose, Kitty, that your aunt could have been secretly married?" he asked. For answer Kitty held up a small object and a newspaper clipping which she had taken a second before from the envelope containing the love letter.