"Oh, no, he won't. I've quarrelled with him too." Ruth smiled. "I seem to have quarrelled with everybody. But Breck threatened, and threats never have the least effect on me. He really did want to marry me, in spite of what people said about his marked attentions to this Oliphant girl. He was crazy to marry me. Things got to an awful pitch of excitement and one night three days ago, he said that if I wouldn't run off with him in the dark like some common girl in a newspaper story, and get married by a country parson along the road somewhere, he wasn't going to spend any more of his time waiting around. He said that Gale--that's Miss Oliphant--would marry him, mother or no mother; she had some heart and feeling in her. I told him that _I_ on the other hand wouldn't lower my self-respect one iota, for love, or position, or any other reason. And so ... well, here I am, with all my bridges burned. By the way," Ruth broke off, "please don't ask me to discuss this matter with Will. He was too intolerant last spring for me to care to talk it over with him now." "You needn't mention it to him," I assured her. "You can imagine," said Ruth, "that I'm not feeling very much like talking about it to any one." "I understand, and we won't refer to it at all. I know how hard it is, Ruth,--but time--" "Oh, time!" replied my sophisticated sister. "There's no scar on my heart for time to heal. You see now, don't you, how safe it is to keep such affairs strictly in the region of one's head." Two or three weeks later I received a letter from Mrs. Sewall. I didn't know her writing but I saw Grassmere engraved on the envelope, so I suspected before I broke the seal. "_My dear Mrs. Maynard_, "You will be interested to know that the engagement of Miss Gale Oliphant to my son is to be publicly announced on Wednesday next. But for you I am afraid this very happy alliance might not have been arranged. Relying absolutely on what you told me I could expect from your sister I have acted on your suggestion, with these results. I was sorry to treat so lovely a girl as your sister seems to be in so cruel a manner, but such an object-lesson seemed to me the most effectual way of showing what a future relation with me might prove to be. Let me say I think she is a very fine-principled and high-minded girl, and another season when I shall return to Grassmere with my son and his bride I trust I may see a great deal of her. Another season I hope I may set everything right with Mrs. Alexander Vars also, whom it seemed necessary to sacrifice for a little while to our cause, if, in fact, I cannot do something toward reparation this year in the few weeks left before I return to New York. Let me add with all heartiness that I am particularly anticipating the pleasure of entertaining, sometime soon, an old fellow-soldier of mine. "Sincerely, "FRANCES ROCKRIDGE SEWALL."