Уилки Коллинз - The Law and the Lady

There I interrupt him. I know it is my duty to restrain myself. But I cannot do my duty.

“My darling, don’t talk of reading the letter! Pray, pray spare yourself—”

He holds up his hand for silence.

“I am not thinking of myself,” he says. “I am thinking of my dead wife. If I give up the public vindication of my innocence, in my own lifetime—if I leave the seal of the letter unbroken—do you say, as Mr. Playmore says, that I shall be acting mercifully and tenderly toward the memory of my wife?”

“Oh, Eustace, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt of it!”

“Shall I be making some little atonement for any pain that I may have thoughtlessly caused her to suffer in her lifetime?”

“Yes! yes!”

“And, Valeria—shall I please You?”

“My darling, you will enchant me!”

“Where is the letter?”

“In your son’s hand, Eustace.”

He goes around to the other side of the bed, and lifts the baby’s little pink hand to his lips. For a while he waits so, in sad and secret communion with himself. I see his mother softly open the door, and watch him as I am watching him. In a moment more our suspense is at an end. With a heavy sigh, he lays the child’s hand back again on the sealed letter; and by that one little action says (as if in words) to his son—“I leave it to You!”

And so it ended! Not as I thought it would end; not perhaps as you thought it would end. What do we know of our own lives? What do we know of the fulfillment of our dearest wishes? God knows—and that is best.

Must I shut up the paper? Yes. There is nothing more for you to read or for me to say.

Except this—as a postscript. Don’t bear hardly, good people, on the follies and the errors of my husband’s life. Abuse me as much as you please. But pray think kindly of Eustace for my sake.