I know I am an ignorant woman, with no brain, but God has given me clear sight at the last, and the things I see are true things, and I must warn you.

Remember that...." The letter ended there.

She had been interrupted or seized with illness, and had never finished it, and had died a few hours afterwards; and the letter was now, for the first time, read by her whom it most concerned, into whose heart and soul the words sank with an immitigable pain and agonised amazement.

A few moments with this death-document had transformed Hylda's life.
Her husband and--and David, were sons of the same father; and the name she bore, the home in which she was living, the estates the title carried, were not her husband's, but another's--David's.

She fell back in her chair, white and faint, but, with a great effort, she conquered the swimming weakness which blinded her.