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She was tremulous too, but in a different fashion. She began to open out a little parcel which she held in her hand quickly, almost with indignation. ‘You will know what to think when you see you own hand and name,’ she said. ‘There! that’s been laid up waiting for me—fancy! for me to find it—these twenty years.’

The Colonel looked at the yellow old letters with increasing agitation, but no increase of understanding. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What does it mean, Elizabeth? I did not go through all this, only to come to an old letter of my own at the last.’

The little woman stamped her foot with a kind of fury. ‘I think you are determined not to understand,’ she cried. ‘Look who that letter is addressed to—look at this other along with it; for God’s sake, Henry, don’t worry me any more! don’t ask what I think: look at them for yourself.’

He did look, but with so bewildered an expression that compassion overcame her. She took the papers over which he was puzzling, looking at his own writing vaguely, with a quick impatient movement.