"I am telling you this," resumed Kelvin, "not as blaming my cousin for her suggestion, but as a confession of my own weakness and wretched folly. That my feelings were very bitter against Miss Lloyd, I need hardly tell you, and yet how I despised myself for doing as I was doing, no one but myself can ever know. Not once, but a hundred times, did I vow to myself that I would write to Miss Lloyd and tell her everything, and a hundred times the recollection of her look and her words when she rejected me, came to my mind and held me back. Then came my illness, which lasted so long that I began to fancy I should never get better again, but all through it the wrong that I had done Miss Lloyd lay with a terrible weight on my conscience, and the first day that I was strong enough to hold a pen I wrote to her that letter which she ought to have received this morning."
"All this was very, very wrong of you, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon. "Unfortunately, however, none of us can undo the past, and I am quite sure that in this case your own conscience will be your severest punishment. Miss Deane said something about a nephew of the late Mr. Lloyd being the real heir."
"Yes, a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton. Now that I have broken the news to Miss Lloyd, it will be my duty at once to communicate with Mr. Warburton--though, strange to say, I discovered for the first time this morning that he had already written to me during my illness, but that the letter had been purposely withheld from me." He looked steadily at Olive as he said these words, but whatever her feelings might be at learning that he had somehow discovered her treachery with regard to Warburton's letters, she still kept her eyes fixed stedfastly on the carpet, and gave him no answering look.
"And now, Miss Lloyd," resumed the lawyer, "I will give into your hands that packet which I ought to have placed there five months ago. I dare not ask you to forgive me for the wrong I have done you. Such forgiveness would be an excess of generosity such as I have no right to expect."
He took a small sealed packet from his pocket. Then he stood up and, weak as he was, would have walked across the room to Eleanor, but she crossed the floor hurriedly and took the packet from his hands.