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. I am not writing to ask you to forgive my
conduct in the old days. I am but too well aware how completely I
have forfeited all right to your esteem or consideration. Believe
me that I have suffered for my fault, and that my life has been a
ruined one. I attempt to make no excuses. I am conscious that
while others were to blame I was most of all, and that it is to my
own weakness of will and lack of energy that the breach between us
was due. However, all this is of the past and can now interest you
but little. You have had your own sorrows and trials, at which,
believe me, I sincerely grieved. And now to my object in writing
to you. Although still comparatively a young man, I have not many
years to live. When last in London I consulted two of the first
physicians, and they agreed that, as I had already suspected, I