“Wait a bit.  I haven’t seen them for years, not since you published the collected works—­with Hamlet left out.”  The young man lifted a worn brown-morocco portfolio tied with a frazzled red ribbon.  “And here”—­his voice dropped—­“here is It—­the letters he wrote to her and never sent.  It was a sort of diary, wasn’t it, going on for years?  What a howling pity we couldn’t print that!”

“Hugh!”

“Don’t faint, Aunt Maria.  You wouldn’t catch me doing anything so indecent.  But suppose Dante’s dear family had suppressed the Vita Nuova.  And it ought to be one of the most extraordinary human documents in the world, perfectly intimate, all the bars down, full of those flashes of his.  Just the man, ipsissimus, that never happened but that once.  Uncle Winthrop, don’t you think that I might read it?”

“Do you think so?  I never did.”

“Oh, if you put it up to me like that!  Of course I can’t.  But what luck that he didn’t ask you to send it to her—­supposing she’s the wrong kind—­wasn’t it ...”  His voice trailed off, leaving his lips foolishly open.  “You don’t mean—­he did?”

“Yes, at the end, after you had left the room,” said Mr. Fowler, firmly.

“And you—­didn’t?  Why not?”

“As you said, for fear she was the wrong kind”

“It was too much to hope that she would be anything else,” his aunt broke in, harshly.  “Shut your mouth, Hugh; you look like a fool.  Think what she might have done with them—­she and some of those unspeakable papers.”

“Oh, I see!  I see!” groaned the young man.  “But how awful not to do the very last thing he wanted!  Did you ever try to find out what kind of a person she was?”

“She took the money.  That was enough,” cried Miss Fowler.  “She got her share, just as though she had been his legal wife.”

Hugh gave her a dazed look.  “You don’t mean that she was his illegal one?  I never—­”

“Oh no, no!” Mr. Fowler interposed.  “We have no reason to think that she was otherwise than respectable.  Maria, you allow most unfortunate implications to result from your choice of words.  We know very little, really.”

“He met her in Paris when he gave that course of lectures over there.  We know that much.  And she was an American student—­from Virginia, wasn’t it?  But that was over twenty years ago.  Didn’t he see her after that?”

“I am sure he did not.”

“She wasn’t with him when he was knocking about Europe?”

“Certainly not.  She came home that very year and married.  As her letter states, she was a widow with three children at the time of his death.”

“I have always considered it providential that he didn’t know she was a widow,” observed Miss Maria, primly.

Her nephew shot her a look that admitted his intermittent amusement in his aunt Maria, but definitely gave her up.  He carefully leaned the portfolio inside the arm of the sofa that neighboured the desk, and picked up the long envelope.