Looking at the handwriting so different from any other which she had ever examined, her thoughts were irresistibly carried back to that morning when, at the shop, she saw this handwriting for the first time on the blank leaf of the Dante; and she recalled the shuddering aversion with which her grandfather had glanced at it, and advised her to commit it to the flames of the forge.
How many such notes as this had been penned to Annie and Gertrude, and to that wretched woman shut up in an Italian convent, and to others of whose names she was ignorant?
Mrs. Murray opened the door, looked in, and said: "Come, I want to show you something really beautiful."
Edna put the note in her pocket, took the bouquet, and followed her friend down-stairs, through the rotunda, to the door of Mr. Murray's sitting-room.
"My son locked this door and carried the key with him; but after some search, I have found another that will open it. Come in, Edna. Now look at that large painting hanging over the sarcophagus. It is a copy of Titian's 'Christ Crowned with Thorns,' the original of which is in a Milan church, I believe. While St. Elmo was last abroad, he was in Genoa one afternoon when a boat was capsized. Being a fine swimmer, he sprang into the water where several persons were struggling, and saved the lives of two little children of an English gentleman, who had his hands quite full in rescuing his wife. Two of the party were drowned, but the father was so grateful to my son that he has written him several letters, and last year he sent him this picture, which, though of course much smaller than the original, is considered a very fine copy. I begged to have it hung in the parlor, but fearing, I suppose, that its history might possibly be discovered (you know how he despises anything like a parade of good deeds), St. Elmo insisted on bringing it here to this Egyptian Museum, where, unfortunately, people can not see it."
For some time they stood admiring it, and then Edna's eyes wandered away to the Taj Mahal, to the cabinets and book-cases. Her lip began to quiver as every article of furniture babbled of the By-Gone--of the happy evenings spent here--of that hour when the idea of authorship first seized her mind and determined her future.
Mrs. Murray walked up to the arch, over which the curtains fell touching the floor, and laying her hand on the folds of silk, said hesitatingly: "I am going to show you something that my son would not easily forgive me for betraying; for it is a secret he guards most jealously--"