at
the papers with a sort of horror.

"Put them back," she said. "Winthrop, I do think you might burn them. If
you keep things like that too long the wrong people are sure to get
them."

"Wait a bit. I haven't seen them for years, not since you published the
collected works--with Hamlet left out." The young man lifted a worn
brown-morocco portfolio tied with a frazzled red ribbon. "And here"--his
voice dropped--"here is It--the letters he wrote to her and never sent.
It was a sort of diary, wasn't it, going on for years? What a howling
pity we couldn't print that!"

"Hugh!"

"Don't faint, Aunt Maria. You wouldn't catch me doing anything so
indecent. But suppose Dante's dear family had suppressed the _Vita
Nuova_. And it ought to be one of the most extraordinary human documents
in the world, perfectly intimate, all the bars down, full of those
flashes of his. Just the man, _ipsissimus_, that never happened but that
once. Uncle Winthrop, don't you think that I might read it?"

"Do you think so? I never did."

"Oh, if you put it up to me like that! Of course I can't. But what luck
that he didn't ask you to send it to her--supposing she's the wrong
kind--wasn't it ..." His voice trailed off, leaving his lips foolishly
open. "You don't mean--he did?"

"Yes, at the end, after you had left the room," said Mr. Fowler, firmly.

"And you--didn't? Why not?"

"As you said, for fear she was the wrong kind"

"It was too much to hope that she would be anything else," his aunt
broke in, harshly. "Shut your mouth, Hugh; you look like a fool. Think
what she might have done with them--she and some of those unspeakable
papers."

"Oh, I see! I see!" groaned the young man. "But how awful not to do the
very last thing he wanted! Did you ever try to find out what kind of a
person she was?"

"She took the money. That was enough," cried Miss Fowler. "She got her
share, just as though she had been his legal wife."

Hugh gave her a dazed look. "You don't mean that she was his illegal
one? I never--"

"Oh no, no!" Mr. Fowler interposed. "We have no reason to think that she
was otherwise than respectable. Maria, you allow most unfortunate
implications to result from your choice of words. We know very little,
really."

"He met her in Paris when he gave that course of lectures over there. We
know that much. And she was an American student--from Virginia, wasn't
it? But that was over twenty years ago. Didn't he see her after that?