He opened the bag.  The little fragile presents, which she called her “keepsakes,” had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool.  Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it.  Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney.  It had been broken at the stem and could be easily mended so as to keep the accident concealed.  Consulting the waiter, Herbert discovered that the fracture could be repaired at the nearest town, and that the place would be within reach when he went out for a walk.  In fear of another disaster, if he put it back in the bag, he opened a drawer in the table, and laid the two fragments carefully inside, at the further end.  In doing this, his hand touched something that had been already placed in the drawer.  He drew it out, and found that it was a book—­the same book that Mrs. Presty (surely the evil genius of the family again!) had hidden from Randal’s notice, and had forgotten when she left the hotel.

Herbert instantly recognized the gilding on the cover, imitated from a design invented by himself.  He remembered the inscription, and yet he read it again: 

“To dear Catherine, from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.”

The book dropped from his hand on the table, as if it had been a new discovery, torturing him with a new pain.

His wife (he persisted in thinking of her as his wife) must have occupied the room—­might perhaps have been the person whom he had succeeded, as a guest at the hotel.  Did she still value his present to her, in remembrance of old times?  No!  She valued it so little that she had evidently forgotten it.  Perhaps her maid might have included it among the small articles of luggage when they left home, or dear little Kitty might have put it into one of her mother’s trunks.  In any case, there it was now, abandoned in the drawer of a table at a hotel.

“Oh,” he thought bitterly, “if I could only feel as coldly toward Catherine as she feels toward me!” His resolution had resisted much; but this final trial of his self-control was more than he could sustain.  He dropped into a chair—­his pride of manhood recoiled from the contemptible weakness of crying—­he tried to remember that she had divorced him, and taken his child from him.  In vain! in vain!  He burst into tears.

Chapter XXXVII.

Mrs. Norman.

With a heart lightened by reconciliation (not the first reconciliation unhappily), with hopes revived, and sweet content restored, Sydney’s serenity of mind was not quite unruffled.  Her thoughts were not dwelling on the evil life which she had honestly deplored, or on the wronged wife to whom she had been eager to make atonement.  Where is the woman whose sorrows are not thrown into the shade by the bright renewal of love?  The one anxiety that troubled Sydney was caused by remembrance of the letter which she had sent to the convent at Sandyseal.