“Why, Lizzie, do you know what he used the bag for?  To keepyour letters in!”

Lizzie looked up more quickly.  She was aware that Andora’s pronoun had changed its object, and was now applied to Deering.  And it struck her as odd, and slightly disagreeable, that a letter of hers should be found among the rubbish abandoned in her husband’s New York lodgings.

“How funny!  Give it to me, please.”

“Give the bag to Aunt Andora, darling!  Here—­look inside, and see what else a big big boy can find there!  Yes, here’s another!  Why, why—­”

Lizzie rose with a shade of impatience and crossed the floorto the romping group beside the other trunk.

“What is it?  Give me the letters, please.”  As she spoke, she suddenly recalled the day when, in Mme. Clopin’s pension, she had addressed a similar behest to Andora Macy.

Andora had lifted a look of startled conjecture.  “Why, thisone’s never been opened!  Do you suppose that awful woman could have kept it from him?”

Lizzie laughed.  Andora’s imaginings were really puerile.  “What awful woman?  His landlady?  Don’t be such a goose, Andora.  How can it have been kept back from him, when we’ve found it here among his things?”

“Yes; but then why was it never opened?”

Andora held out the letter, and Lizzie took it.  The writingwas hers; the envelop bore the Passy postmark; and it was unopened.  She stood looking at it with a sudden sharp drop of the heart.

“Why, so are the others—­all unopened!” Andora threw out on a rising note; but Lizzie, stooping over, stretched out her hand.

“Give them to me, please.”

“Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie—­” Andora, still on her knees, continued to hold back the packet, her pale face paler with anger and compassion.  “Lizzie, they’re the letters I used to post for you—­the letters he never answered! Look!”

“Give them back to me, please.”

The two women faced each other, Andora kneeling, Lizzie motionless before her, the letters in her hand.  The blood had rushed to her face, humming in her ears, and forcing itself into the veins of her temples like hot lead.  Then it ebbed, and she felt cold and weak.

“It must have been some plot—­some conspiracy!” Andora cried, so fired by the ecstasy of invention that for the moment she seemed lost to all but the esthetic aspect of the case.

Lizzie turned away her eyes with an effort, and they rested on the boy, who sat at her feet placidly sucking the tassels of the bag.  His mother stooped and extracted them from his rosy mouth, which a cry of wrath immediately filled.  She lifted him in her arms, and for the first time no current of life ran from his bodyinto hers.  He felt heavy and clumsy, like some one else’s child; and his screams annoyed her.

“Take him away, please, Andora.”

“Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie!” Andora wailed.

Lizzie held out the child, and Andora, struggling to her feet, received him.