“Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know. There was a time when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand together in doing this good work. That hope is at an end. I no longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A man who thinks as you think can give no help to anybody--it is his miserable condition to have no hope. So be it! I will hope for two, and will work for two; and I shall find some one to help me--never fear--if I deserve it. “I will say nothing about my plans--I have not read the Trial yet. It is quite enough for me that I know you are innocent. When a man is innocent, there _must_ be a way of proving it: the one thing needful is to find the way. Sooner or later, with or without assistance, I shall find it. Yes! before I know any single particular of the Case, I tell you positively--I shall find it! “You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I don’t pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without a stain on his character or his name--thanks to his wife. “Write to me, sometimes, Eustace; and believe me, through all the bitterness of this bitter business, your faithful and loving “VALERIA.” There was my reply! Poor enough as a composition (I could write a much better letter now), it had, if I may presume to say so, one merit. It was the honest expression of what I really meant and felt. I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary gesture when he was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. “It seems the rashest letter that ever was written,” said the dear old man. “I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing what you propose to do. Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. I wish your uncle Starkweather was here: I wonder what he would say? Oh, dear me, what a letter from a wife to a husband! Do you really mean to send it to him?” I added immeasurably to my old friend’s surprise by not even employing the post-office. I wished to see the “instructions” which my husband had left behind him. So I took the letter to his lawyers myself. The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my husband’s “instructions,” providing, among other things, for the payment of one clear half of his income as long as he lived to his wife. I positively refused to touch a farthing of his money.