She did not know that Eglington, standing
in a deep doorway, heard her, and seized upon the words eagerly and
suspiciously, and turned them over in his mind.
Below, at the desk where Eglington's mother used to write, Hylda sat with
a bundle of letters before her. For some moments she opened, glanced
through them, and put them aside. Presently she sat back in her chair,
thinking--her mind was invaded by the last words of the Duchess; and
somehow they kept repeating themselves with the words in the late
Countess's diary: "Is it only the mother in me, not the love in me?"
Mechanically her hand moved over the portfolio of the late Countess, and
it involuntarily felt in one of its many pockets. Her hand came upon a
letter. This had remained when the others had been taken out. It was
addressed to the late Earl, and was open. She hesitated a moment, then,
with a strange premonition and a tightening of her heart-strings, she
spread it out and read it.
At first she could scarcely see because of the mist in her eyes; but
presently her sight cleared, and she read quickly, her cheeks burning
with excitement, her heart throbbing violently.
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