CHAPTER IX
THE VIKING'S TOWER
THERE in the middle of the afternoon the butler brought her a note. For a moment before she read the superscription, a wild rush of something which might have been joy yet could not be, sent a pale flush of color into her cheek. But she glanced at the envelope carelessly, and when the man had gone, quickly opened it.
It was from John Rizzio, signed with the familiar initials and begun without either name or qualification:
You will think it strange, perhaps, that I should write to you after the events of last night, because the modesty of a woman is the last thing that forgives. My action is beyond apology and I offer none for fear that it may be construed into a hope—a selfish hope of an unimaginable forgiveness. Hope has passed—that with the others, but something else remains, something less selfish than hope and more vital than self-interest and that is a whole-hearted wish that your honor may be kept free from the taint of the dark and furtive things with which it has come into contact.
I am not a man, as you know, to boast of disinterestedness. I have lived a life in which my own affairs were always paramount, my own aims always most important. I am telling you this to warn you that my generosity to Hammersley is not actuated by any love of a man who has spoiled my dearest
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