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. Sons of the same father! The past
flashed before her, the strange likeness she had observed, the trick of
the head, the laugh, the swift gesture, the something in the voice.
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