Carlyle Terrace, Edgware Road."
Enclosed with this there was a second letter--from his wife.
He read it with a countenance that expressed mingled anger and contempt.
"Fool!" he muttered; "this is about the only service she could do me."
The letter was long and incoherent; blotted with tears--in places
completely illegible. Mr. Sheldon cared only to master the main facts
contained in it, which were these:--His wife had left him for ever. Dr.
Jedd and Valentine Hawkehurst had told her of something--something that
affected the safety of her darling and only child--and the knowledge of
which must separate her for ever from him. Of the money which she had
brought to him she claimed nothing. Even her jewels, which were in his
keeping, in the iron safe where he kept his papers, she did not attempt
to obtain from him. Valentine would not allow her to starve. The humblest
shelter, the poorest food, would suffice her in the future; but no home
of his providing could she ever inhabit again.
"What I have suffered in this last few days is only known to myself and
to heaven," she wrote. "O Philip, how could you--how could you even shape
the thought of such a deed as this, which you have been doing, day after
day, for the last two months? I could not have believed what they have
told me, if I had not seen my child fade hour by hour under your care,
slowly, surely--and recover as surely directly you were excluded from any
part in our care of her.
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