CHAPTER VII.
TELLS HOW UNCLE LOVEDAY MADE A DISCOVERY; AND WHAT THE TIN BOX CONTAINED.
An hour afterwards I was sitting at the bedside of my dying mother.
The shock of that terrible meeting had brought her understanding--and death: for as her mind returned her life ebbed away.

White and placid she lay upon her last bed, and spoke no word; but in her eyes could be read her death-warrant, and by me that which was yet more full of anguish, a tender but unfading reproach.

This world is full of misunderstandings, but seldom is met one so desperate.

How could I tell her now?
And how could she ever understand?
It was all too late.

"Too late! too late!" the words haunted me there as the bright sun struggled through the drawn blind and illumined her saintly face.
They and the look in her sweet eyes have haunted me many a day since then, and would be with me yet, did I not believe she knows the truth at last.