"'Poor Evan!' she had said. I did not forget that Evan Wildash was the name of her one-time lover, who was said to have gone to the Cape years before, and to have died there.
"After a time, without lifting her face from the cushions, she said, 'Leave me now, dear Miss Sudlow. Come to me at the same time to-morrow, when I shall have more to say to you.'
"I need not tell you, my dear Phil, with what impatience I awaited the afternoon of the morrow. In the interim Mrs. Melray kept closely to her rooms, being waited upon by her own maid and being present at none of the family meals.
"I found her on the second afternoon just as I had found her on the first; it might have been five minutes instead of twenty-four hours since I had left her last. She was very pale, but perfectly composed. 'I want you to sit, please, where you sat yesterday,' she said.
"For a little while she lay back on her cushions with drooping eye-lids and close-drawn brows.
"'When I came to think over what passed at our interview yesterday,' at length she began, 'I saw that two courses were open to me. I might have professed my entire ignorance of the writer of the manuscript found in the railway carriage; have averred that all that part of the narrative prior to the murder which concerns itself with the "young wife" and her lover was sheer romance, that I had never had a lover since I was sixteen, and that he had died in Africa years ago; and, finally, I might have defied anyone to prove that I knew one iota more in connection with my husband's death than was given by me in evidence at the inquest. That was one of the two courses open to me, and to most women in my position it is the one which would have recommended itself to them.
"'The other course was to tell the truth as far as it is known to me, to reveal that which I have hitherto hidden in my own breast--and that is what I have made up my mind to do. Ah! you don't know how often I have been tempted to do this before to-day; but, like the coward I am at heart, I have hitherto shrunk from the ordeal. I am quite aware of the feeling with which both Mr. Melray and his mother regard me, and that the knowledge is very painful to me I need scarcely say. I think it very likely that if their attitude towards me had been one of greater sympathy (affection I hardly looked for), they would long ago have been made aware of all that I have to tell. But be that as it may, the truth shall now be told, whatever its effect may be on the relations between them and me in time to come. For more reasons than one, however, I have thought it advisable not to recount, to you by word of mouth what there is to make known, but rather to set it down in black and white, so that you and others may be able to read it at your leisure. It took me till far into the night to accomplish my self-imposed task. Here is the result."