"Papa has been so good to me, you do not know. I shall never forget it --nor will Ernest. Ernest thought he would stand in the way of our marriage, but he did not. He said I must choose for myself, as he had done when he married my dearest mother; that I had been a good girl to him, and a good daughter would make a good wife; also that a good wife would not cease to be a good daughter because she was married-- especially living close at hand, as we shall always live: Ernest has promised it. "Thus, you see, nobody I love will lose me at all, nor shall I forget them: I should hate myself if it were possible. I shall be none the less a daughter to my father--none the less a friend to you. I will never, never forget you, my dear!" (here the writing became blurred, as if large drops had fallen on the paper while she wrote.) "It is twelve o'clock, and I must bid you good-night--and God bless you ever and ever! The last time I sign my dear old name (except once) is thus to you. "Your faithful and loving friend, "Helen Cardross." Thus she had written, and thus he sat and read--these two, who had been and were so dear to one another. Perhaps the good angels, who watch over human lives and human destinies, might have looked with pity upon both. As for Helen's father, and Helen herself too, if (as some severe judges may say) they erred in suffering themselves to be thus easily deceived --in believing a man upon little more than his own testimony, and in loving him as bad men are sometimes loved, under a strong delusion, by even good women, surely the errors of unworldliness, unselfishness, and that large charity which "thinketh no evil" are not so common in this world as to be quite unpardonable. Better, tenfold, to be sinned against than sinning. "Better trust all, and be deceived, And weep that trust and that deceiving, Than doubt one heart which, if believed, Had bless'd one's life with true believing." Lord Cairnforth did not think this at the time, but he learned to do so afterward. He learned, when time brought round its divine amende, neither to reproach himself so bitterly, nor to blame others; and he knew it was better to accept any sad earthly lot, any cruelty, deceit, or wrong inflicted by others, than to have hardened his heart against any living soul by acts of causeless suspicion or deliberate injustice.