“This leaves us two to face things as they are as best we can, Elizabeth. After what I have written down in this letter, can you still care enough for me, and for the conventions and the wishes of the families on both sides, to--not to forgive me; I’m not going to ask that--but to take me just as I am, and let things go on as before? I shan’t blame you in the least if you can’t, you know; but if it must come to a break between us, you must let me be the one to make the break. By all right and reason the Uncle Byrd legacy is yours; and whatever happens, I promise you I shall never touch a penny of it. “Good night, my dear. My love for you is precisely the same as it has always been. The madness which Richardia Birrell was stirring up in me was something entirely different, and no doubt everybody would say it was worlds less worthy.” Tregarvon had a bad habit of not reading his letters after they were written and signed, and he did not break the habit now. Folding, sealing, and addressing his confession, he went to the lobby to mail it. Thanks to the rainy Sunday, the hotel mail-box was stuffed to repletion with week-end missives, and Tregarvon, after trying in vain to wedge his own through the slit, exemplified his careless habit by leaving it on top of the box with the newspapers. Later in the evening there were other additions made to the overflow newspaper mail, and some one, still more careless than the Philadelphian, displaced the letter, which fell, unnoted, to the floor. Here, during the small hours, one of the sweepers found it; and since some muddy boot heel had defaced the postage-stamp, and all but obliterated the address, the sweeper passed his find on to the night clerk. At this point another phase of Tregarvon’s heedlessness came to the fore. He had neglected to put his own name and address in the corner of the envelope, hence the clerk had no means of identifying the sender. Being a young man of resource, he enclosed the letter, just as it was, in a larger envelope, copying, or trying to copy, the address. But the marring boot heel had done its work too thoroughly. The Philadelphia street number was entirely effaced; and “Miss Elizabeth Wardwell” became, in the night clerk’s transcription, “Miss Eliza Bell Woodwell.” Tregarvon was astir early on the Monday morning, was fortunate enough to be able to purchase the new power-plant without waiting to have it shipped in from some Northern supply house, hustled busily until he had seen his purchase entrained for Coalville, and took the afternoon local for his return. As often happened, the local was late, and he found Carfax waiting dinner for him when he dropped off on the office-building side of the train at the home station.