"The one who told you I have always loved Bob; life has told me that, Adrian. Just as life has told you my story." They sat without speaking for a time, and then the woman sighed and rose. "Two people who have lived together twenty-five years can have no secrets from each other. In a thousand, ways the truth comes out." "I should have gone away a long time ago," he repeated, "a long time ago; I knew it, but I didn't trust my instincts." "Here comes father," she said, as the gate clicked. They stood together, listening to the slow shuffle of the colonel coming up the walk, and the heavy fall of his cane. The wife put out her hand and said gently, "I think I have wronged you, Adrian, more than any one else." He did not take her hand but sighed, and turned and went up the wide stairway. He was an old man then, and she remembered the years when he tripped up gayly, and then she looked at her own gray hair in the mirror and saw that her life was spent too. As the colonel came in gasping asthmatically, he found his daughter waiting for him. "Is Adrian better?" he asked excitedly. "Neal said Adrian was sick." "Yes, father, he's upstairs packing. He is going out on the four o'clock train." "Oh," said the colonel, and then panted a moment before asking, "Has any one told you how it happened?" "Yes," she replied, "I know everything. I think I'll run over there now, father." As she stood in the doorway, she said, "Don't bother Adrian--he'll need no help." And so Molly Brownwell passed the last night with her dead lover. About midnight the bell rang and she went to the door. "Ah, madam," said Jacob Dolan, as he fumbled in his pockets, and tried to breathe away from her to hide the surcease of his sorrow, "Ah, madam," he repeated, as he suddenly thought to pull off his hat, "I did not come for you--'twas Miss Hendricks I called for; but I have one for you, too. He gave the bundle to me the last thing--poor lad, poor lad." He handed her the letter addressed to Mrs. Brownwell, and then asked, "Is the sister about?" And when he found she could not be seen he went away, and Molly Brownwell sat by the dead man's body and read:-- "My darling--my darling--they will let a dead man say that to you--won't they? And yet, so far as any thought of mine could sin against you, I have been dead these twenty years. Yet I know that I have loved you all that time, and as I sit alone here in the bank, and take the bridle off my heart, the old throb of joy that we both knew as children comes back again. It is such a strange thing--this life--such a strange thing." Then there followed a burst of passionate regret from the man's very heart, and it is so sacred to a manly love that curbed itself for a score of years, that it must not be set down here.