Jerrie was sobbing now, and Maude’s arm was around her neck, while Frank had walked to a window, and, like his wife, was looking out upon the lawn, which he did not see for the tears which filled his eyes.

‘When the money stopped,’ the letter went on, ’we grew so poor, Jerrie and I and Nannine—­that is the French woman who lives with me and whom Jerrie calls Mah-nee.  She will bring my child to you when I am dead; and oh, be kind to her, for a truer, more faithful woman never lived.  She is such a comfort to me, except when she scolds about Arthur and calls him a bete noire, which he is not, as you will see.  He was shut up, I don’t know where, but think it was where they put people with bad heads, and he forget everything till he was out, and as far as Paris on his way to America.  Then he remembered and wrote me from Liverpool such a letter—­full of love and sorrow for the past, and sent me such lovely diamonds, just like those he had bought for his sister in America, he said—­and he was going home at such a date on the Scotia, and he wished me to join him in Liverpool.  I send the letter with this to prove that I write true.  But it was too late, for I was too weak to travel; neither could I write to him, for he gave me no address.  ’That was last September, and I have been dying ever since, for my heart broke when I thought of what was and what might have been could I have found him.  The money he sent me then I am saving for Nannine and Jerrie to take them to America when I am dead.  All the days and nights I prayed that Arthur might remember and write me again, and God heard, and he did; and five days ago I received his letter.  So crazy it was, but just as full of love and tenderness and a desire to see me.  He told me of his lovely home and the Gretchen room, where my picture is in the window; and in case there should be no one to meet me at the station when I arrived he sent me directions how to find Tracy Park, and told me just what to do when I reached New York.  He would come for me himself, he said, only the sea made him so sick and he was afraid he should forget everything if he did.  But you will see in his letter what he wrote and how fond he was of me; and if he is alive and too crazy to understand now, tell him, when he is better, how I loved him and prayed for him every hour that God would bring him, at last, where I am going so soon.  Nannine will take him my Bible, with passages marked by me, and a photograph which I had taken a year ago, and which will tell you how I looked then.  Now I am so thin and pale that Arthur would hardly know me.  I send, too, a lock of Jerrie’s hair, cut when she was three weeks old.  Darling Jerrie!  She is such a comfort to me, and so old and womanly for her years!  She will remember much of our life here, for she notices everything and understands it, too, and goes over, as in a play, what she sees and hears.

’We have been cold and hungry