It had evidently been sealed within a few months, for it was in a kind

of bluish-tinted paper which Hyde bought in Lynn one day during the past

winter. She turned it over and over in her hand, and the temptation to

see the love-token inside became greater every moment. This was a thing

her husband had never designed any human eye but his own to see.

Whatever revelation there was in it, much or little, would be true.

Tortured by doubt and despair, she felt that impulse to rely on chance

for a decision which all have experienced in matters of grave moment,

apparently beyond natural elucidation.

"If in this parcel there is some love-pledge from Lady Suffolk, then I

go not; nothing shall make me go. If in it there is no word of her, no

message to her or from her; if her name is not there, nor the letters of

her name,--then I will go to my own. A new love, one not a year old, I

can put aside. I will forgive every one but my Lady Suffolk."

So Katherine decided as she broke the seal with firmness and rapidity.

The first paper within the cover made her tremble. It was a half sheet

which she had taken one day from Bram's hand, and it had Bram's name

across it. On it she had written the first few lines which she had had

the right to sign "Katherine Hyde." It was, indeed, her first "wife"

letter; and within it was the precious love-token, her own

love-token,--the bow of orange ribbon.

She gave a sharp cry as it fell upon the desk; and then she lifted and

kissed it, and held it to her breast, as she rocked herself to and fro

in a passionate transport of triumphant love. Again and again she fed

her eyes upon it. She recalled the night she wore it first, and the

touch of her mother's fingers as she fastened it at her throat. She

recalled her father's happy smile of proud admiration for her; the

afternoon, next, when she had stood with Joanna at the foot of the

garden and seen her lover wearing it on his breast. She remembered what

she had heard about the challenge, and the desperate fight, and the

intention of Semple's servant to remove the token from her senseless

lover's breast, and her father's noble interference. The bit of fateful

ribbon had had a strange history, yet she had forgotten it. It was her

husband who had carefully sealed it away among the things most precious

to his heart and house. It still kept much of its original splendid

colour, but it was stained down all its length with blood. Nothing that

Hyde could have done, no words that he could have said, would have been

so potent to move her.




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