except from
among female convicts assigned to settlers; nominally as servants, but
actually as mates on hire--suppose we call them. One need not say much
of this unhappy class; it is only mentioned to show that Thornton could
have found no woman to take the place of the beautiful and devoted
helpmeet whose constancy to him had survived every trial. No wonder he
was ill at ease with the idea of her adventuring back to England alone.
But it took a mind as wicked as his to conceive and execute the means by
which he prevented it. It seems to have been suggested by the fact that
the distribution of letters in his district had been assigned to him by
the Governor. This made it easy to deliver them or keep them back, when
it was in his interest to do so, without fear of detection. The letters
coming from England were few indeed, so he was able to examine them at
leisure.

At first he was content to withhold Phoebe's letters, hoping that
Maisie would be satisfied with negative evidence of her death, which he
himself suggested as the probable cause of their suspension. But when
this only increased her anxiety to return to her native land, he cast
about for something he could present as direct proof. The death of her
father supplied the opportunity. A black-edged sheet came, thickly
written with Phoebe's account of his last illness, in ink which, as the
event showed, did not defy obliteration. Probably Thornton had learned,
among malefactors convicted of his own offence, secrets of forgery that
would seem incredible to you or me. He contrived to obliterate this
sheet all but the date-stamps outside, and then--the more readily that
he had been informed that only fraud for gain made forgery
felony--elaborated as a palimpsest a most careful letter in the
handwriting of the father announcing Phoebe's own death, and also that
of the daughter whom Maisie had bequeathed to her care. He must have
been inspired and upborne in this difficult task by the spirit of a true
artist. No doubt all _faussure_, to any person with an accommodating
moral sense, is an unmixed delight. This letter remains, and has been
seen by the present writer and others. The dexterity of the thing almost
passes belief, only a few scarcely perceptible traces of the old writing
being visible, the length of the new words being so chosen as to hide
most of the old ones. What is even more incredible is that the original
letter from Phoebe was deciphered at the British Mu