it, and to take or leave it as you thought fit;
and no one else had the right to decide this for you. But when you so
misjudged me about my journey to Australia, I understood that it was I
myself, and not my position, that stood between us; and that your nature
and mine were so different, and our ideas so far apart, that it was not
in my power to make you happy, though I would have died to do so. So I
went out of your life, for fear I should spoil it; and I have kept out
of your life ever since, because I know you are happier without me; for
I do so want you to be happy, dear.

"There is one other thing I have to tell you: I am George Farringdon's
son. I shouldn't have bothered you with this, only I feel it is
necessary--after I am gone--for you to know the truth, lest any impostor
should turn up and take your property from you. Of course, as long as I
am alive I can keep the secret, and yet take care that no one else comes
forward in my place; and I have made a will leaving everything I possess
to you. But when I am gone, you must hold the proofs of who was really
the person who stood between you and the Farringdon property. I never
found it out until my uncle died; I believed, as everybody else
believed, that the lost heir was somewhere in Australia. But on my
uncle's death I found a confession from him--which is in this safe,
along with my parents' marriage certificate and all the other proofs of
my identity--saying how his sister told him on her death-bed that, when
George Farringdon ran away from home, he married her, and took her out
with him to Australia. They had a hard life, and lost all their children
except myself; and then my father died, leaving my poor mother almost
penniless. She survived him only long enough to come back to England,
and give her child into her brother's charge. My uncle went on to say
that he kept my identity a secret, and called me by an assumed name, as
he was afraid that Miss Farringdon would send both him and me about our
business if she knew the truth; as in those days she was very bitter
against the man who had jilted her, and would have been still bitterer
had she known he had thrown her over for the daughter of her father's
manager. When Maria Farringdon died and showed, by her will, that at
last she had forgiven her old lover, my uncle's mind was completely
gone; and it was not until after his death that I discovered the papers
which put me in possession of the facts of the case