Going up into the chambers, he noticed many evidences of Anna’s having dressed, herself to go out, in haste.  The door of the wardrobe stood open, and also one of her drawers, with her bunch of keys lying upon the bureau.  The dress she had on when he left her at dinner-time, had been changed for another, and, instead of being hung up, was thrown across a chair.

The drawer that stood open was her private drawer, in which she kept all her trinkets, and little matters particularly her own.  Its contents her husband had never seen, and had never desired to see.  Now, however, something more than mere curiosity prompted him to look somewhat narrowly into its contents.  In one corner of this drawer he found a small casket, beautifully inlaid, that had never before come under his notice.  Its workmanship was costly and exquisite.  He lifted it and examined it carefully, and then taking the bunch of keys that lay before him, tried the smallest in the lock.  The lid flew open.  A few letters, and a small braid of hair, were its only contents.  These letters were addressed to her under her maiden name.  The husband was about unfolding one of them, when he let it fall suddenly into the casket, saying, as he did so—­

“No, no!  I have no right to read these letters.  They were not addressed to my wife.”  With an effort he closed the drawer and forced himself from the room.  But the fact that Westfield had been a suitor for the hand of Anna, and was now on terms of the closest intimacy with her, coming up vividly in his mind, he came, after some reflection, to the firm conclusion that he ought to know the contents of letters treasured so carefully—­letters that he had every reason now to believe were from Westfield.  Their post-mark he had noticed.  They were from New Orleans.

After again hesitating and debating the question for some time, he finally determined to know their contents.  He read them over and over again, each sentence almost maddening him.  They were from Westfield.  The reader already knows their contents.  From their appearance, it was evident that they had been read over very many times; one of them bore traces of tears.  For some time the feelings of Miller were in a state of wild excitement.  While this continued, had his wife or Westfield appeared, he would have been tempted to commit some desperate act.  But this state gradually gave way to a more sober one.  The letters were replaced carefully, the casket locked, and every thing restored to its former appearance.  The husband then sat down to reflect, as calmly as was in his power, upon the aspect of affairs.  The more he thought, the more closely he compared the sentiments of the letters so carefully treasured with the subsequent. familiarity of his wife with Westfield, the more satisfied was he that he had been deeply and irreparably wronged—­wronged in a way for which there was no atonement.

As this conviction fully formed itself in his mind, the question of what he should do came up for immediate decision.  He had one child, about eighteen months old, around whom his tenderest affections had entwined themselves; but when he remembered that his friend’s intimacy with his wife had run almost parallel with their marriage, a harrowing suspicion crossed his mind, and made his heart turn from the form of beauty and innocence it had loved so purely.