The old woman stood pale and without the power of speech while he made this long harangue. When he paused she raised her arm, and, pointing with a long thin yellow finger at the door, said huskily:
"Go, sir; go at once!" She could say no more.
He bounded to his feet in amazement. He had no intention to hurt or offend. Nothing was farther from his thoughts. He had been simply heedless, full of his own mind, unobservant.
"I am sure I beg your pardon," he said, in a tone of sincere apology. "I had no intention of causing you any annoyance. I thought you might like to make the _Independent_ and the _Metropolitan Vindicator_ the medium----"
"Go, sir, go! You are committing an outrage. Go!"
"Believe me, madam," he began, backing towards the door.
"I do not want to hear any more. Go, sir!"
"But, my dear madam, you must allow me to explain----"
"If you do not leave at once I shall send my servant for the police!"
The reporter had reached the door by this time, and as Mrs. Mansfield ceased speaking, he bowed and retired, comforting himself with the assurance that she was mad.
When she was alone she sank down and covered her face with her hands, too much exhausted to think.
For upwards of an hour she did not move; then she took away her hands from before her face, arose, and, with resolute step, crossed the room to where her desk stood on a small table in the pier. With resolute hands she opened the desk, and took out that old bundle which had been sent to her by her dying child by the same messenger that had brought the boy four-and-thirty years ago.
Yes, she would destroy this hateful relic of disgrace and dishonour. She would burn it down to the last atom. Nothing of it, nothing of that perfidious daughter, should survive.
She sat down and broke the seals, and cut the moulding cord, and released what was inside. This proved to be a large leather pocket-book.
The first thing that met her eye was the copy of a certificate of marriage between Charles Augustus Cheyne and Harriet Mansfield at Anerly Church. She searched in the pocket-book and found a small sealed packet, bearing, in a man's writing, these words: "Not to be opened for three years." The date was the same as that on the copy of the marriage-certificate.