Silence once more, broken by the rustling of paper as Serena unfolds the fresh sheet upon which Mr. Demorest has transcribed the contents of the mutilated letter--the silence of the very grave reigns throughout the old house. The girl in the other room has thrown herself into a low seat, and crouches there like some hunted creature brought to bay, her heart overflowing with awful and bitter anguish--a suffering so intense that no words have ever been framed in any language capable of expressing it. A cloud of horrible darkness and despair envelopes her; she can see no ray of light; she is groping in the gloom, still unable to fully comprehend the nature of this wondrous horror that has come into her life. She will realize it to its full extent by and by.
Loud and clear, and with a ring of triumph in it, Serena's voice falls upon the silence once more as she reads that fatal letter aloud--reads to the bitter end.
"DOCTOR FREDERICK LYNNE,--I feel it is my duty, now that Beatrix is grown and the time is coming for me to remove her from your care, to reveal to you the nature of the terrible future in store for her--the dark inheritance which must inevitably descend upon her sooner or later. You are a physician and a scientific scholar, and you will comprehend and no doubt feel intense interest in this strange and peculiar case. Let me go back a generation or two. Mildred Dane, the mother of Beatrix, was a Miss Baretta; her parents were South Americans, and very strange and eccentric people. They reared Mildred, who was an only child, in the strictest privacy, and the girl grew up in ignorance of the blight which was destined to be cast upon her life. She was very beautiful, and very sweet-tempered--too easily yielding to others. She was forced by her parents into a distasteful marriage with Godfrey Dane, an old man, but very wealthy. One child was born, and Godfrey Dane died when it was a few months old. That child was Beatrix--little Beatrix who has lived with you all her life.
"I pass over Mildred's tragic death, and all other events which do not bear directly upon the fate of this child; it is with her alone I wish to deal. Dr. Lynne, I am going to tell you all in as few words as possible. Before her death, poor Mildred became a victim of leprosy, and while her child was drawing from its mother's breast the awful, incurable plague into its system. That Beatrix will escape the scourge is simply impossible.