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.