About ten days after I received a letter from Mr. J——­, telling me that he had visited the house since I had seen him; that he had found the two letters I had described, replaced in the drawer from which I had taken them; that he had read them with misgivings like my own; that he had instituted a cautious inquiry about the woman to whom I rightly conjectured they had been written.  It seemed that thirty-six years ago (a year before the date of the letters) she had married, against the wish of her relations, an American of very suspicious character; in fact, he was generally believed to have been a pirate.  She herself was the daughter of very respectable tradespeople, and had served in the capacity of a nursery governess before her marriage.  She had a brother, a widower, who was considered wealthy, and who had one child of about six years old.  A month after the marriage the body of this brother was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of “found drowned.”

The American and his wife took charge of the little boy, the deceased brother having by his will left his sister the guardian of his only child,—­and in event of the child’s death the sister inherited.  The child died about six months afterwards,—­it was supposed to have been neglected and ill-treated.  The neighbors deposed to have heard it shriek at night.  The surgeon who had examined it after death said that it was emaciated as if from want of nourishment, and the body was covered with livid bruises.  It seemed that one winter night the child had sought to escape; crept out into the backyard; tried to scale the wall; fallen back exhausted; and been found at morning on the stones in a dying state.  But though there was some evidence of cruelty, there was none of murder; and the aunt and her husband had sought to palliate cruelty by alleging the exceeding stubbornness and perversity of the child, who was declared to be half-witted.  Be that as it may, at the orphan’s death the aunt inherited her brother’s fortune.  Before the first wedded year was out, the American quitted England abruptly, and never returned to it.  He obtained a cruising vessel, which was lost in the Atlantic two years afterwards.  The widow was left in affluence, but reverses of various kinds had befallen her:  a bank broke; an investment failed; she went into a small business and became insolvent; then she entered into service, sinking lower and lower, from housekeeper down to maid-of-all-work,—­never long retaining a place, though nothing decided against her character was ever alleged.  She was considered sober, honest, and peculiarly quiet in her ways; still nothing prospered with her.  And so she had dropped into the workhouse, from which Mr. J——­ had taken her, to be placed in charge of the very house which she had rented as mistress in the first year of her wedded life.