"I'm so glad you showed me that pleasant letter, Aunt Mildred," he said. "My mind is quite easy now as to the sex of the informer. No woman, I dare swear, to whom I ever spoke words of more than common courtesy could have written such words as those. Perhaps I may find out his name some day, and thank him for the trouble he has taken." Lady Mildred did not feel exactly comfortable just then. She would have preferred the whole transaction being now left in as much obscurity as possible. She knew how determined and obstinate the speaker could be when he had real cause to be unforgiving. She knew that he was capable of exacting the reckoning to the uttermost farthing, though the settlement was ever so long delayed. On the whole, however, she was satisfied with the aspect of affairs as they remained. She had good reason to be so. Doubt and distrust may scorn to vanish; but they generally leave behind them a slow, subtle, poisonous influence, that the purest and strongest faith may not defy. Of all diseases, those are the most dangerous, which linger in the system when the cure is pronounced to be perfect. I knew a man well who passed through the Crimean war untouched by steel or shot, though he was ever in the front of the battle. Even the terrible trench-work did not seem to affect him. He would come in, wet but not weary, sleep in his damp tent contentedly, and rise up in his might rejoicing. When, quite at the end of the war, he was attacked by the fever, no one felt any serious alarm. We supposed that Kenneth McAlpine could shake off any ordinary sickness as easily as Sampson did the Philistine's gyves. In truth, he did appear to recover very speedily; and, when he returned to England, seemed in his usual health again. But soon he began to waste and pine away without any symptoms of active disease. None of the doctors could reach the seat of the evil, or even define its cause. It took some time to sap that colossal strength fairly away; but month by month the doom came out more plainly on his face, and the end has come at last. Poor Kenneth's grave will be as green as the rest of them, next spring, when the grass begins to grow. Standing by the sepulchre of Faith, or Love, or Hope--if we dared look back--we might find it hard to remember when and where the first seeds of decay were sown, though we do not forget one pang of the last miserable days that preceded the sharp death-agony. CHAPTER XIV. THE LETTERS OF BELLEROPHON.