By the time the servants came they found Mrs. Oakley as white as her lord.  But with firm hands and compressed lips she ministered to his needs pending the doctor’s arrival.  She bathed his face and temples, chafed his hands, and forced the brandy between his lips.  Finally he stirred and his hands gripped.

“The letter!” he gasped.

“Yes, dear, I have it; I have it.”

“Give it to me,” he cried.  She handed it to him.  He seized it and thrust it into his breast.

“Did—­did—­you read it?”

“Yes, I did not know——­”

“Oh, my God, I did not intend that you should see it.  I wanted the secret for my own.  I wanted to carry it to my grave with me.  Oh, Frank, Frank, Frank!”

“Never mind, Maurice.  It is as if you alone knew it.”

“It is not, I say, it is not!”

He turned upon his face and began to weep passionately, not like a man, but like a child whose last toy has been broken.

“Oh, my God,” he moaned, “my brother, my brother!”

“’Sh, dearie, think—­it ’s—­it ’s—­Frank.”

“That ’s it, that ’s it—­that ’s what I can’t forget.  It ’s Frank,—­Frank, my brother.”

Suddenly he sat up and his eyes stared straight into hers.

“Leslie, no one must ever know what is in this letter,” he said calmly.

“No one shall, Maurice; come, let us burn it.”

“Burn it?  No, no,” he cried, clutching at his breast.  “It must not be burned.  What! burn my brother’s secret?  No, no, I must carry it with me,—­carry it with me to the grave.”

“But, Maurice——­”

“I must carry it with me.”

She saw that he was overwrought, and so did not argue with him.

When the doctor came, he found Maurice Oakley in bed, but better.  The medical man diagnosed the case and decided that he had received some severe shock.  He feared too for his heart, for the patient constantly held his hands pressed against his bosom.  In vain the doctor pleaded; he would not take them down, and when the wife added her word, the physician gave up, and after prescribing, left, much puzzled in mind.

“It ’s a strange case,” he said; “there ’s something more than the nervous shock that makes him clutch his chest like that, and yet I have never noticed signs of heart trouble in Oakley.  Oh, well, business worry will produce anything in anybody.”

It was soon common talk about the town about Maurice Oakley’s attack.  In the seclusion of his chamber he was saying to his wife: 

“Ah, Leslie, you and I will keep the secret.  No one shall ever know.”

“Yes, dear, but—­but—­what of Berry?”

“What of Berry?” he cried, starting up excitedly.  “What is Berry to Frank?  What is that nigger to my brother?  What are his sufferings to the honour of my family and name?”

“Never mind, Maurice, never mind, you are right.”

“It must never be known, I say, if Berry has to rot in jail.”