--a bewildering
thought! She wavered between them, and was relieved when the speaker
continued:--"You may unlock my old workbox over yonder. The letter be
inside the lid, behind the scissors. I'll begone to lie down a bit on
your bed, child!" Was old Phoebe running away from that letter?

Ruth knew the trick of that workbox of old. It brought back her early
childhood to find the key concealed in a little slot beneath it; hidden
behind a corner of green cloth beyond suspicion; that opened, for all
that, when the edge was coaxed with a finger-nail. It had been her first
experience of a secret, and a fascination hung about it still. That
confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite
of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of
the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about
this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later
years. It crossed Ruth's mind as she found the key, how, a year ago,
when the interior of this box was shown to Dave Wardle by his country
Granny, his delight in it, and its smell of otto of roses that never
failed, had stirred forgotten memories; and this recollection, with the
mystery of that vanished mother still on earth--close at hand, there in
the room!--made her almost dread to raise the box-lid. But she dared it,
and found the letter, though her brain whirled at the entanglements of
life and time, and she winced at the past as though scorched by a
spiritual flame. It took her breath away to think what she had sought
and found; the hideous instrument of a wickedness almost
inconceivable--her own father's!

"Oh, how I hope it is that! Bring it--bring it, my dear, my Ruth--my
Ruth for me, now! Yes--show it me with the light, like that." Thus old
Maisie, struggling to raise herself on the bed, but with a dangerous
spot of colour on her cheek, lately so pale, that said fever. Ruth
trembled to admit the word to her mind; for, think of her mother's age,
and the strain upon her, worse than her own!

Nevertheless, it was best to indulge this strong wish; might, indeed, be
dangerous to oppose it. Ruth bolstered up the weak old frame with
pillows, and lit two candles to give the letter its best chance to be
read. She found her mother's spectacles, though in doubt whether they
could enable her to read the dim writing, written with a vanishing ink,
even paler than the forged letter Gwen and her father had unearthed.