For between the lines I could read the unspoken thought that had been in her mind since I was a very young girl.  “Safe in the shelter of a good man’s love” meant to my mother only one thing.  If she had written the words “safe in the shelter of Jack Bickett’s love,” I could not have grasped her meaning more clearly.

But my mother’s wish must forever remain ungranted.  Jack was “somewhere in France,” and for me, safe or not safe, stable or unstable, Dicky was “my man,” the only man I had ever loved, the only man I could ever love.  “For better or worse,” the dear old minister had said who performed our wedding ceremony, and my heart reaffirmed the words as I bent my eyes again to the closely written pages I held in my hands.

“Because you have always been so bitter, Margaret, against your father, and because it has always caused me great anguish to speak of him, I have allowed you to rest under the impression that I had never heard anything concerning him since his disappearance, and that I do not know whether he be living or dead.  The last statement is true, for years ago I definitely refused to receive any communication from him, but I must tell you that I believe him to be living, and that I know that living or dead he has provided money for your use if you should ever wish to claim it.

“The address he last sent me, and that of the firm of lawyers who has the management of the property intended for you, are sealed in envelopes in this box.  In it also are all the things necessary to establish your identity, my marriage certificate, your birth record, pictures of your father and of me, and of the three of us taken when you were two years old, before the shadow of the awful tragedy that came later had begun to fall.”

I sprang from my chair, dropping the pages of the letter unheeded in the shock of the revelation they brought me.  My father had planned for me; had provided for me; had tried to communicate with my mother!  He must have been repentant; he was not all the heartless brute I had thought him.  As though a cloud had been lifted, from my life and a weary weight had rolled from my heart, I turned again to mother’s letter.

“Remember, it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living, sometime you may be reconciled, to him.  I have been weak and bitter enough during all these years to be meanly comforted by your stanch championship of me, and your detestation of the wrong your father did me.  But death brings clearer vision, my child, and I cannot wish that your father’s last years,—­if, indeed, he be living—­should be desolated by not knowing you.  I want you to know that there were many things which, while they did not extenuate your father, yet might in some measure explain his action.

“I was much to blame—­I can see it now, for not being able to hold his love.  You are so much like me, my darling, that I tremble