He hesitated a little.

“Go, dear,” whispered Mildred.  “I want time to think.  I will give you my answer this afternoon.”

Mildred sat still on the verandah thinking, but she had not been there many minutes before a servant came with her English letters that had been brought by the unfortunate Roman, and at the same time informed her that the Garth Castle had been sighted, and would anchor in a few hours.  Mildred reflected that it was not often they got two English mails in one day.  She began idly turning over the packet before her.  Of late letters had lost much of their interest for Mildred.

Presently, however, her hand made a movement of almost electric swiftness, and the colour left her face as she seized a stout envelope directed in a hand of peculiar delicacy to “Arthur Heigham, Esq., care of Mrs. Carr, Madeira.”  Mildred knew the handwriting, she had seen it in Arthur’s pocket-book.  It was Angela Caresfoot’s.  Next to it there was another letter addressed to Arthur in a hand that she did not know, but bearing the same postmarks, “Bratham” and “Roxham.”  She put them both aside, and then took up the thick letter and examined it.  It had two peculiarities—­first, it was open, having come unsealed in transit, and been somewhat roughly tied up with a piece of twine; and secondly, it contained some article of jewellery.  Indeed, by dint of a little pressing on the outside paper, she was able to form a pretty accurate opinion as to what it was.  It was a ring.  If she had turned pale before when she saw the letter, she was paler still now.

“Heavens,” she thought, “why does she send him a ring?  Has anything happened to her husband?  If she is a free woman, I am lost.”

Mildred looked at the letter lying open before her, and a terrible temptation took possession of her.  She took it up and put it down again, and then again she took it up, wiping the cold perspiration from her forehead.

“My whole life is at stake,” she thought.

Then she hesitated no longer, but, taking the letter, slipped off the piece of twine, and drew its contents from the envelope.  The first thing to fall out, wrapped in a little cotton-wool, was the ring.  She looked at it, and recognized it as Arthur’s engagement ring, the same that Lady Bellamy had taken with her.  Then, putting aside the statement, she deliberately unfolded the letter, and read it.

Do not think too hardly of her, my reader.  The temptation was very sore.  But, when one yields to temptation, retribution is not unfrequently hard upon its track, and it would only have been necessary to watch Mildred’s face to see that, if she had sinned, the sin went hand in hand with punishment.  In turn, it took an expression of astonishment, grief, awe, and despair.  She read the letter to the last word, then she took the statement, and glanced through it, smiling once or twice as she read.  Next she replaced everything in the envelope, and, taking it, together with the other letter addressed to Arthur, unbuttoned the top of her loose-bodied white dress, and placed them in her bosom.