here with my child. Even sorrow great as mine is
best borne in one's own home."

She went to the escritoire to get the papers. When she opened the
senseless chamber of wood, she found herself in the presence of many a
torturing, tender memory. In one compartment there were a number of
trout-flies. She remembered the day her husband had made them--a long,
rainy, happy day during his last visit. Every time she passed him, he
drew her face down to kiss it. And she could hear little Joris talking
about the work, and his father's gay laughter at the child's remarks. In
an open slide, there was a rude picture of a horse. It was the boy's
first attempt to draw Mephisto, and it had been carefully put away. The
place was full of such appeals. Katherine rarely wept; but, standing
before these mementos, her eyes filled, and with a sob she clasped her
hands across them, as if the sight of such tokens from a happy past was
intolerable.

Drawer B was a large compartment full of papers and of Hyde's personal
treasures. Among them was a ring that his father had given him, his
mother's last letter, a lock of his son's hair, her own first
letter--the shy, anxious note that she wrote to Mrs. Gordon. She looked
sadly at these things, and thought how valueless all had become to him
at that hour. Then she began to arrange the papers according to their
size, and a small sealed parcel slipped from among them. She lifted it,
and saw a rhyme in her husband's writing on the outside,--

"Oh, my love, my love! This thy gift I hold
More than fame or treasure, more than life or gold."

It had evidently been sealed within a few months, for it was in a kind
of bluish-tinted paper which Hyde bought in Lynn one day during the past
winter. She turned it over and over in her hand, and the temptation to
see the love-token inside became greater every moment. This was a thing
her husband had never designed any human eye but his own to see.
Whatever revelation there was in it, much or little, would be true.
Tortured by doubt and despair, she felt that impulse to rely on chance
for a decision which all have experienced in matters of grave moment,
apparently beyond natural elucidation.

"If in this parcel there is some love-pledge from Lady Suffolk, then I
go not; nothing shall make me go. If in it there is no word of her, no
message to her or from her; if her name is not there, nor the letters of
her name,--then I will go to my own. A new love, one not a