pillar-box.

Such sadness came into my heart--though sternly it should have been
gladness--that I begged their pardon, and went away, as if with a
private message. And wicked as it may have been, to read was more than
once to cry. The letter began abruptly:

"You know nearly all my story now. I have only to tell you what brought
me to you, and what my present offer is. But to make it clear, I must
enlarge a little.

"There was no compact of any kind between your father and myself. He
forbore at first to tell what he must have known, partly, perhaps, to
secure my escape, and partly for other reasons. If he had been brought
to trial, his duty to his family and himself would have led him, no
doubt, to explain things. And if that had failed, I would have returned
and surrendered myself. As things happened, there was no need.

"Through bad luck, with which I had nothing to do, though doubtless the
whole has been piled on my head, your father's home was destroyed, and
he seems to have lost all care for every thing. Yet how much better off
was he than I! Upon me the curse fell at birth; upon him, after thirty
years of ease and happiness. However, for that very reason, perhaps, he
bore it worse than I did. He grew imbittered against the world, which
had in no way ill-treated him; whereas its very first principle is to
scorn all such as I am. He seems to have become a misanthrope, and
a fatalist like myself. Though it might almost make one believe the
existence of such a thing as justice to see pride pay for its wickedness
thus--the injury to the outcast son recoil upon the pampered one, and
the family arrogance crown itself with the ignominy of the family.

"In any case, there was no necessity for my interference; and being
denied by fate all sense of duty to a father, I was naturally driven to
double my duty to my mother, whose life was left hanging upon mine.
So we two for many years wandered about, shunning islands and insular
prejudice. I also shunned your father, though (so far as I know) he
neither sought me nor took any trouble to clear himself. If the one
child now left him had been a son, heir to the family property and so
on, he might have behaved quite otherwise, and he would have been bound
to do so. But having only a female child, who might never grow up, and,
if she did, was very unlikely to succeed, he must have resolved at least
to wait. And perhaps he confirmed himself with the reflection that even
if peo