"And you say the losers by the deception would not believe in it?"
"No, they only shook their heads at our weak sisterly affection."
"I wish I could see one of those letters. Where is Maddox now?"
"I cannot tell. He certainly did not go away immediately after the
settlement of accounts, but it has not been possible to us to keep up a
knowledge of his movements, or something might have turned up to justify
Edward. Oh, what it is to be helpless women! You are the very first
person, Colin, who has not looked at me pityingly, like a creature to be
forborne with an undeniable delusion!"
"They must be very insolent people, then, to look at that brow and eyes,
and think even sisterly love could blind them," he said. "Yes, Ermine,
I was certain that unless Edward were more changed than I could believe,
there must be some such explanation. You have never seen him since?"
"No, he was too utterly broken by the loss of his wife to feel anything
else. For a long time we heard nothing, and that was the most dreadful
time of all! Then he wrote from a little German town, where he was
getting his bread as a photographer's assistant. And since that he
has cast about the world, till just now he has some rather interesting
employment at the mines in the Oural Mountains, the first thing he has
really seemed to like or care for."
"The Oural Mountains! that is out of reach. I wish I could see him. One
might find some means of clearing him. What directed your suspicion to
Maddox?"
"Chiefly that the letters professed to have been sent in a parcel to him
to be posted from the office. If it had been so, Edward and Lucy would
certainly have written to us at the same time. I could have shown, too,
that Maddox had written to me the day before to ascertain where Edward
was, so as to be sure of the date. It was a little country village,
and I made a blunder in copying the spelling from Lucy's writing. Ailie
found that very blunder repeated in Dr. Long's letter, and we showed him
that Edward did not write it so. Besides, before going abroad, Edward
had lost the seal-ring with his crest, which you gave him. You remember
the Saxon's head?"
"I remember! You all took it much to heart that the engraver had made it
a Saracen's head, and not a long-haired Saxon."
"Well, Edward had renewed the ring, and taken care to make it a Saxon.
Now Ailie could get no one to believe her, but she is certain that the
letter was sealed with the old Saracen not the new Saxon. But--but--if
you had but been there--"