"It is there," she said.
He had great self-control.

Before looking at the page to which she had directed his attention, he turned the letter over slowly, fingering the pages one by one.

"My mother to my father," he remarked.
Instinctively he knew what it contained.

"You have been reading my mother's correspondence," he added in cold reproof.
"Do you forget that you asked me to arrange her papers ?" she retorted, stung by his suggestion.
"Your imagination is vivid," he exclaimed.

Then he bethought himself that, after all, he might sorely need all she could give, if things went against him, and that she was the last person he could afford to alienate; "but I do remember that I asked you that," he added--"no doubt foolishly." "Read what is there," she broke in, "and you will see that it was not foolish, that it was meant to be." He felt a cold dead hand reaching out from the past to strike him; but he nerved himself, and his eyes searched the paper with assumed coolness-even with her he must still be acting.