For fully half an hour she sat without moving, her thoughts busy with the past, then she again took up the letter and reread it several times.  Its contents were as follows: 

“Dear Mrs. Conway:  You will be doubtless surprised at seeing my handwriting, and your first impulse will naturally be to put this letter into the fire.  I am not writing to ask you to forgive my conduct in the old days.  I am but too well aware how completely I have forfeited all right to your esteem or consideration.  Believe me that I have suffered for my fault, and that my life has been a ruined one.  I attempt to make no excuses.  I am conscious that while others were to blame I was most of all, and that it is to my own weakness of will and lack of energy that the breach between us was due.  However, all this is of the past and can now interest you but little.  You have had your own sorrows and trials, at which, believe me, I sincerely grieved.  And now to my object in writing to you.  Although still comparatively a young man, I have not many years to live.  When last in London I consulted two of the first physicians, and they agreed that, as I had already suspected, I was suffering from heart disease, or rather, perhaps, from an enfeebled state of my heart, which may at any moment cease to do its work.

“Naturally then, I have turned my thoughts as to whom I should leave my property.  My sisters are amply provided for.  I have no other near relatives, and therefore consider myself free to leave it as I choose.  I have long fixed my thoughts upon the daughter of a dear friend, the rector of Bilston; she is now thirteen years old, and half my property is left her.  I have left the other half to your son.  The whole subject to an annuity to yourself; which you will not, I trust, refuse to accept.  I have never thought of any woman but you, and I hope that you will not allow your just resentment against me to deprive me of the poor satisfaction of making what atonement lies in my power for the cruel wrong I formerly did you.

“Were I strong and in health I can well imagine that you would indignantly refuse to receive any benefits from my hands, but knowing your kindness of heart, I feel sure that you will not sadden the last days of a doomed man by the knowledge that even after his death his hopes of insuring the comfort of the one woman on earth he cared for are to be disappointed.

“I should like to know your son.  Would it be too much to ask you to spare him for a while from time to time so long as I live?  I have a double motive, I say frankly, in thus asking him to come here.  I wish him and my little pet, Mabel Withers, to come to like each other.  I wish to divide my property between them, and yet I should be glad if the whole estate could remain intact.

“I should not be so foolish as to make a proviso that two persons who are as yet so young, and who may not in any way be suitable