Could she by any possibility have misread it the first time? It was a short letter:--
“With what feelings, dear Agnes, will you read this letter! But I feel that I must write it--I should have confessed all to you when I could have done, so face to face, but I was a coward. Often at night aboard the steamer coming out here, I thought upon my guilt, and night by night when in the midst of the great pasturages I have thought over it, and felt how great a ruffian I was, especially as another is suffering for my sin. I cannot endure the stinging of my conscience any longer. Agnes, I must make a clean breast of it to you. Hear me and do not abhor me utterly when I confess to you now that that sin--that crime which came to light in the summer--you will know to what I allude--i cannot name it to you--was mine. I kept my guilt a secret and allowed one who was innocent to suffer for me. Was there ever so base, so cowardly a wretch? I am unworthy to be your brother. Only one way remains to me of making reparation, and you know what that way is. I am coming home by next steamer. Dearest Agnes, can you ever forgive me for the disgrace I have brought upon you? Indeed, I feel that this is the bitterest part of my punishment--the knowledge that I have disgraced our name.
She read the letter a second time. It left no loophole of escape for her. Its meaning was but too plain. It appeared in every line. The crime--there was only one crime to which it could refer--there was only one crime for which an innocent man was suffering punishment.
Once again the letter dropped from her hand. She looked at her lingers that had held it as though it had been written with blood that left a stain behind it. For some moments she gazed at the thing lying on the floor at her feet, trying to comprehend all that it meant to her. She felt stunned, as though she had been struck on the head with a heavy weapon. The sense of what that letter meant benumbed her. She was overwhelmed by the force of the blow which she had received.
She stood there in the middle of the room, both her hands pressed against her heart. She could hear its wild beating through the silence. The force of its beating caused her to sway to and fro on her feet.