The Law and the Lady

study. I am waiting, with the fatal letter in my hand⁠—and my mother-in-law is waiting in the next room to me⁠—to hear from his own lips whether he decides to break the seal or not.

The minutes pass; and still we fail to hear his footstep on the stairs. My doubts as to which way his decision may turn affect me more and more uneasily the longer I wait. The very possession of the letter, in the present excited state of my nerves, oppresses and revolts me. I shrink from touching it or looking at it. I move it about restlessly from place to place on the bed, and still I cannot keep it out of my mind. At last, an odd fancy strikes me. I lift up one of the baby’s hands, and put the letter under it⁠—and so associate that dreadful record of sin and misery with something innocent and pretty that seems to hallow and to purify it.

The minutes pass; the half-hour longer strikes from the clock on the chimneypiece; and at last I hear him! He knocks softly, and opens the door.

He is deadly pale: I fancy I can detect traces of tears on his cheeks. But no outward signs of agitation escape him as he takes his seat by my side. I can see that he has waited until he could control himself⁠—for my sake.

He takes my hand, and kisses me tenderly.

“Valeria!” he says; “let me once more ask you to forgive what I said and did in the bygone time. If I understand nothing else, my love, I understand this: The proof of my innocence has been found; and I owe it entirely to the courage and the devotion of my wife!”

I wait a little, to enjoy the full luxury of hearing him say those words⁠—to revel in the love and the gratitude that moisten his dear eyes as they look at me. Then I rouse my resolution, and put the momentous question on which our future depends.

“Do you wish to see the letter, Eustace?”

Instead of answering directly, he questions me in his turn.

“Have you got the letter here?”

“Yes.”

“Sealed up?”

“Sealed up.”

He waits a little, considering what he is going to say next before he says it.

“Let me be sure that I know exactly what it is I have to decide,” he proceeds. “Suppose I insist on reading the letter⁠—?”

There I interrupt him. I know it is my duty to restrain myself. But I cannot do my duty.

“My darling, don’t talk of reading the letter! Pray, pray spare yourself⁠—”

He holds up his hand for silence.

“I am not thinking of myself,” he says. “I am thinking of my dead wife. If I give up the public vindication of my innocence, in my own lifetime⁠—if I leave the seal of the letter unbroken⁠—do you say, as Mr. Playmore says, that I shall be acting mercifully and tenderly toward the memory of my wife?”

“Oh, Eustace, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt of it!”

“Shall I be making some little atonement for any pain that I may have thoughtlessly caused her to suffer in her lifetime?”

“Yes! yes!”

“And, Valeria⁠—shall I please you?”

“My darling, you will enchant me!”

“Where is the letter?”

“In your son’s hand, Eustace.”

He goes around to the other side of the bed, and lifts the baby’s little pink hand to his lips. For a while he waits so, in sad and secret communion with himself. I see his mother softly open the door, and watch him as I am watching him. In a moment more our suspense is at an end. With a heavy sigh, he lays the child’s hand back again on the sealed letter; and by that one little action says (as if in words) to his son⁠—“I leave it to you!”

And so it ended! Not as I thought it would end; not perhaps as you thought it would end. What do we know of our own lives? What do we know of the fulfillment of our dearest wishes? God knows⁠—and that is best.

Must I shut up the paper? Yes. There is nothing more for you to read or for me to say.

Except this⁠—as a postscript. Don’t bear hardly, good people, on the follies and the errors of my husband’s life. Abuse me as much as you please. But pray think kindly of Eustace for my sake.

Endnotes

1. Note by Mr. Playmore:

   The greatest difficulties of reconstruction occurred in this first portion of the torn letter. In the fourth paragraph from the beginning we have been obliged to supply lost words in no less than three places. In the ninth, tenth, and seventeenth paragraphs the same proceeding was, in a greater or less degree, found to be necessary. In all these cases the utmost pains have been taken to supply the deficiency in exact accordance with what appeared to be the meaning of the writer, as indicated in the existing pieces of the manuscript. ↩

2. Note by Mr. Playmore:

   The lost words and phrases supplied in this concluding portion of the letter are so few in number that it is needless to mention them. The fragments which were found accidentally stuck together by the gum, and which represent the part of the letter first completely reconstructed, begin at the phrase, “I spoke of you shamefully, Eustace;” and end with the broken sentence, “If in paying me this little attention, you only encouraged me by one fond word or one fond look, I resolved not to take⁠—” With the assistance thus afforded to us, the labor of putting together the concluding half of the letter (dated “October 20”) was trifling, compared with the almost insurmountable difficulties which we encountered in dealing with the scattered wreck of the preceding pages. ↩

3. Note by the writer of the Narrative:

   Look back for a further illustration of this point of view to the scene at Benjamin’s house (Chapter XXXV), where Dexter, in a moment of ungovernable agitation, betrays his own secret to