g to you if--if she should not
live to place them in your own hands herself. It is this which brought
me across the ocean."

As she spoke, Mrs. Yates took up the leathern satchel, which lay against
her feet, and opened its rusty clasp with her trembling hands. She drew
forth a casket from the scant garments it contained, and, still kneeling
on the floor, opened it. A blaze of diamonds broke up from the box. The
old countess uttered a feeble cry, and clasped two quivering hands over
her eyes.

"She was troubled about bringing them out of England, and sent them to
her foster-mother with this letter."

"Is there a letter? Yates, give it to me!"

Mrs. Yates reached forth the letter, which had begun to turn yellow with
age.

The countess took it, and attempted to open her glasses; but those
little hands trembled so fearfully that she could not loosen the gold
which clasped them in.

"Read it for me. I cannot! I cannot!"

Two great tears trembled out of the pain in that aged heart, and fell
upon her cheeks like frost upon the white leaves of a withered rose.

Hannah Yates read the letter--a sweet, touching epistle, full of
mournful affection, which that murdered lady had written only a few days
before her death, when some presentiment of coming evil was no doubt
upon her. The diamonds were her mother's, she wrote, and had only
crossed the ocean with her because of the haste with which the voyage to
America had been arranged. Fearing for their safety, she was about to
intrust them to her foster-mother, who had promised to bring them back
to England with her own hands, if any evil should fall upon her, or if
her sojourn in America was protracted.

"The jewels which belong to the Carset estate, and the child, which will
inherit them, I entrust to my dear foster-mother, when I am gone, and I
sometimes think that we may never meet again, my mother. This good woman
will bring the diamonds, which I will not have endangered, and will tell
you about the child, dearer to me than my own life, nay, than my own
soul! Tell Lord Hope, if he should seek to take her, that it was the
dying wish of his wife that her child should pass at once into the
protection of her own most beloved mother, when Hannah Yates brings her
to England. I think he will not deny this to a woman who has loved him
better, oh! how much better! than herself--who would die, if she could,
rather than be in the way of his happiness. Give him this letter. I
thin