"I will see what it is!" she exclaimed. "This is my mother's portrait, and I have a right. Tomorrow I will demand of Bernard Dane why her portrait is hidden here, its face to the wall, alone in this dreary room which was used in times past for God only knows what dreadful purposes. I must know the meaning of this mystery!"
Grasping the folded paper in one cold hand, Beatrix made her way back to her own chamber, locked herself in, and sat down to examine the paper so strangely come into her possession.
It was a letter addressed to Bernard Dane in a delicate hand, the ink faded, but still legible.
"You have loved me, Bernard Dane"--so ran the written lines--"and I am grateful for your love, though I can not return it. But since you have told me all--all the bad, black secret of my doomed life, which has been concealed from me until now--I feel that with love or ties of friendship I have nothing to do. For me there can be no earthly affection, no love-lit future, no tender care. The ties of home, the love of little, innocent children are not for me. Oh, Bernard, surely, in this bitter knowledge that has come upon me at last, you are amply avenged! for I am accursed--accursed! The heritage into which I have come--descended to me straight from my South American ancestors--has wrought the ruin of my whole life. Yet I never knew it, never suspected it, until it was too late, and they had forced me to marry old Godfrey Dane. Upon my little child--my little, innocent Beatrix--the curse will descend--the awful curse which has desolated my life. Her dark inheritance will come upon her, and she will long for death, and curse the mother who gave her birth. Oh, Bernard, Bernard! pity me and help me to escape. Kill me, Bernard, will you not? It will be such a grand relief to be free from this horrible burden--to be done with this curse, and get out of the world--anywhere--anywhere--"
Here the writing ceased abruptly, and the letter ended with its grewsome secret still untold. Beatrix crumpled the letter in her shaking hand, and rising to her feet, began to pace to and fro, her face as white as the face of the dead, her eyes wild with horror--the madness of despair.
"In the name of God," she groaned, desperately, "what is this secret--this maddening, tantalizing secret--the curse which has ruined my mother's life, and which I firmly believe brought her to her death? Oh, God, have pity, and deliver me from this awful curse! But if I must suffer--if I can not get free--let me know--in pity and mercy let me know the nature of the awful blight which hangs over my life like a curse!"