She glanced through it quickly, and then read it again more carefully.

She was very pale now, and her lips trembled as she laid down the letter.
"So," she said to herself in a low tone, "it is to him after all I owe all this," and she looked round her pretty room; "and I never once really suspected it.

I am glad now," she went on after a pause, "that I did not; for, of course, it would have been impossible to have taken it, and how different the last twelve years of my life would have been.

Poor Herbert! And so he really suffered too, and he has thought of me all this time." For fully half an hour she sat without moving, her thoughts busy with the past, then she again took up the letter and reread it several times.

Its contents were as follows: "Dear Mrs.Conway: You will be doubtless surprised at seeing my handwriting, and your first impulse will naturally be to put this letter into the fire.