“I know it is all for me,” she wrote, “and I felt like crying when she was talking about you. I am so glad she told me, for it has made me resolve to be worthy of you and the position I am one day to fill as your wife. When will that be, Everard? Must we wait forever? Sometimes I get desperate, and am tempted to start at once for Rothsay, and, facing your father, tell him the truth, and brave the storm which I suppose would follow. But then I know you would be angry at such a proceeding, and so I give it up, and go on waiting patiently, for I do wish to please you, and am glad this Miss Belknap is here, as I am sure of her friendship when the time of trial comes. She is very sweet and lovely, and I wonder you did not prefer her to your unworthy but loving Josey.” Beatrice also wrote to Everard that day, and told him where she was, and why, and said of Josephine, “there must be good in her, or she could not seem so sweet, and amiable, and affectionate. A little vain she may be, and fond of attention, and why not? She cannot look in the glass and not know how beautiful she is. And her voice is so soft, and low, and musical, and her manners so lady-like. You see I am more than half in love with her, and I am quite disposed to advise a recognition on your part of her claim upon you. Of course I shall not betray you. That is not my business here. I came to see what this girl is, whose life is joined with yours. I find her quite up to the average of women, and think it your safer course to acknowledge her, and not leave her subject to the temptations which must necessarily beset a pretty woman like her, in the shape of admiration and attention from every marriageable man in town. It is your safer way, Everard, for remember there is a bar between you and any other face which may look to you inexpressibly fair and sweet, and all the sweeter and fairer because possession is impossible.” These letters reached Everard the same evening, and he found them in his office on his return from the Forrest House, where he had sat with Rossie an hour on the piazza, with the moonlight falling on her face and softening the brilliancy of her great black eyes. How beautiful those eyes were to him now, and how modestly and confidingly they looked up occasionally in his face, and drooped beneath the long lashes which rested on the fair cheeks. She was so sweet and loving, this pure, fresh young girl; and her face and eyes haunted Everard all the way down the avenue and the long street to his office, where he found his letters,—one from Beatrice, one from Josephine, and this last he saw first, recoiling from it as from a serpent’s touch, and remembering with a bitter pain the face seen in the moonlight, and the pressure of the hand he had held in his at parting. Then he took Bee’s letter, and turned it over, and saw it was postmarked at Holburton, and with a start of fear and apprehension tore it open and read it eagerly.