She had also
noted that it was the same letter on each occasion; that it was a closed
letter, and also that it was unstamped. She knew that, because she had
seen it in his desk--the desk once belonging to her father, a sloping
thing with a green-baize top. Sometimes he kept it locked, but very
often he did not; and more than once, when he had asked her to get him
something from the desk, not out of meanness, but chiefly because her
moral standard had not a multitude of delicate punctilios, she had
examined the envelope curiously. The envelope bore a woman's
handwriting, and the name on it was not that of the man who owned the
coat--and the letter. The name on the envelope was Shiel Crozier, but
the name of the man who owned the coat was J. G. Kerry--James Gathorne
Kerry, so he said.
Kitty Tynan had certainly enough imagination to make her cherish a
mystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything else
had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she
felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty
stories which she thought would fit the case of J. G. Kerry, who for over
four years had lived in her mother's house. He had become part of her
life, perhaps just because he was a man,--and what home is a real home
without a man?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential
word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness; indeed, he showed in
his manner occasionally almost a boisterous hilarity.
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