'And how long do you mean to wait, my dear? No matter; at all events you
may open the _desk_; you may find papers to direct you--you may find Dr.
Bryerly's address--you may find, heaven knows what.'
So down we went--I assenting--and we opened the desk. How dreadful the
desecration seems--all privacy abrogated--the shocking compensation for the
silence of death!
Henceforward all is circumstantial evidence--all conjectural--except the
_litera scripta_, and to this evidence every note-book, and every scrap of
paper and private letter, must contribute--ransacked, bare in the light of
day--what it can.
At the top of the desk lay two notes sealed, one to Cousin Monica, the
other to me. Mine was a gentle and loving little farewell--nothing
more--which opened afresh the fountains of my sorrow, and I cried and
sobbed over it bitterly and long. The other was for 'Lady Knollys.' I did
not see how she received it, for I was already absorbed in mine. But in
awhile she came and kissed me in her girlish, goodnatured way. Her eyes
used to fill with tears at sight of my paroxysms of grief. Then she would
begin, 'I remember it was a saying of his,' and so she would repeat
it--something maybe wise, maybe playful, at all events consolatory--and the
circumstances in which she had heard him say it, and then would follow the
recollections suggested by these; and so I was stolen away half by him, and
half by Cousin Monica, from my despair and lamentation.
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