"Sit down, Lord Spunyarn, sit down," she said, "nothing you can have to tell me can be more painful than the suspense, suspicion, and anxiety of mind which I have endured for the last few days. Tell me the worst at once. I have nothing to forgive my husband. When on his death-bed he asked for my forgiveness, I feared that there was something dreadful to come; but I fully and freely forgave him, Lord Spunyarn, and whatever you may have to tell, it will not alter my affection for his memory." "Dear Mrs. Haggard," said the philanthropist, with a little sigh, "the matter concerns the future, as well as the past; the secret has been well kept, and my poor friend has done his duty in providing for his son George, and for you. I must tell you that at one time I had my suspicions, but the thing seemed in itself so monstrous, so improbable, that I put it from me as an unworthy thought. When your late husband whispered those last words to me as he was dying, he informed me that I was his executor, and told me to examine a little red box that I should find at his banker's, and then to tell you everything. I obtained the box; I have examined it, and it is here." As he said the words, he placed a little red morocco box upon the table. CHAPTER V. A LITTLE RED BOX. I don't think Lord Spunyarn could have really found it cold in Mrs. Haggard's boudoir in the second week of September; perhaps it was for the sake of collecting his ideas that he busied himself with the fire and added another toy log to the flickering embers upon the dainty hearth; then he sat down, and staring straight at the little red morocco box upon the table, he began. "I think it may perhaps spare your feelings a little, dear Mrs. Haggard, if I tell you that from what my poor friend said, and from the contents of this box, I have become aware of the secret of Lucius's birth." He never took his eyes off the box for one instant, or he would have seen as he said the words that the widow's face grew white as the lawn cuffs upon her wrists. She interrupted him suddenly. "It is not I who have betrayed the secret. I have guarded it faithfully for twenty years, God forgive me," she added with a sigh. "But what could I do? I was bound to shield my cousin, even if I had not sworn to her to do so; for she would not take my word for it, Lord Spunyarn. No hint of it has ever passed my lips. Conceive my astonishment when my dying husband told me that he was aware of the fact, for I suppose it was that he meant, when he said to me, with almost his last breath, that he had 'known it all along.'" "Yes," said her husband's old friend, still staring at the little red box, "and then?" "And then he died, Lord Spunyarn," she said with a sigh; "but he had asked me to forgive him, and to take care of Lucius." "And did you forgive him, dear madam?" "Of course I forgave him." "And you forgive him still?" "Certainly, though what it was he wished me to forgive I cannot tell."