erful-looking white seats.

There were long borders of dripping, storm-dashed flowers in front of
them, and mignonette run to seed, and dahlias filled with moisture to
their brims. Some gardeners were busy tying up saplings which had been
detached from their stakes, and the beech trees on the other side of
the high walls of the garden tossed their branches together and sighed
a little.

Peter waited for a minute or two until the gardeners had moved out of
hearing, and then said abruptly and with difficulty: 'You know those
papers that the doctor gave me yesterday?'

'Those notes and things which were on her writing-table?' Jane asked.

Peter nodded his head, and then with an effort began again--this time
with an attempt at formality--'I 'm sorry to have to tell you that
there is something in one of them that I shall have to speak to you
about.'

'Something in one of your mother's notes?' asked Jane, her level eyes
turned questioningly upon him.

'I 'm telling it all wrong,' said Peter distractedly, 'and making it
worse for you.'

'Are you quite sure that you need tell me anything at all?' asked Jane,
and she laid her hand in his.

'I am quite sure,' he said; and then a very surprising thing happened,
for he put Jane's hand aside and stood up before her.

'I 'm not even going to take your hand,' he said, 'until I have told
you all about it. You see, there was a letter addressed to me amongst
those on her writing-table yesterday. I 've shown it to the lawyer,
but neither he nor I can make anything of it. It is directed to me to
be given to me at her death; but she must have died while she was
writing it. It leaves off in the middle of a sentence.'

'I think,' said Jane slowly, 'that nothing matters in the whole world
so long as we have each other.'

'Ah, my dear!' said Peter, and he sat down on the bench and took her
hand again. 'I 'll show you the letter,' he said suddenly, and brought
the sheet of notepaper out of his pocket.

'May I read it?' said Jane.

'Yes, if you will,' he replied.

Afterwards they could tell every word of the unfinished letter by
heart; but at the first reading the words seemed merely to puzzle Jane
Erskine, and conveyed very little sense to her.

'When you get this letter I shall be dead,' wrote the woman who had
meant to live for many years, 'and before I die I think there is
something which I had better tell you. I am not haunted by remorse nor
indulging in a deathbed