“So ho! the young man threatens me,” he said to himself. “I am glad he has shown his hand, though it was foolish in him to do so, and proves that he is not well up in fencing. I wonder what he wrote to Rossie; and if she will show me the letter.” Rossie could not show it to him, but when next they met in her room, she said to him: “I have heard from Everard, and he says that he is glad I am so happy with you, and he will be friendly with you always, and I do so hope you will like each other. Have you, too, heard from him?” The doctor laughed a low, musical laugh, and drawing his sister to him, said: “You cannot dissemble worth a cent. Don’t you suppose I know that Everard’s letter to you was not all you hoped it to be. He finds it hard to forgive me for having deprived him of something which his maturer manhood tells him is sweeter, more precious, and far more to be desired than the object of his boyish passion. And I cannot blame him. I am as sorry as he, in a different way, of course, and you——” He did not finish the sentence, for Rossie broke away from him, and burying her face in the cushions of the couch on which they were sitting, burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping. “Don’t,” she said, as he made an effort to soothe her. “Don’t speak to me, please. I must have it out now. I have kept it back so long. Oh, I wish I had died when I was a little girl, and before I grew to be a woman, with a woman’s love, which I must fight all my life, and never know a moment of absolute rest and quiet. Oh, why did you do it? Why did you separate me from my love? for he is mine, and I am his. I was everything to him; he was everything to me. Oh, Everard, just this once I will say out what I feel. _I love you,—I love you_; and I cannot help it. I know it is wicked, and try to put it away. I bury it out of my sight; I trample on it; I stamp upon it; I think I have the mastery over it, and on the slightest provocation it springs into life more vigorous than ever, and I _cannot_ conquer it.” She had said all she had to say, but she kept on sobbing piteously, like one in mortal pain; and, hardhearted, and utterly unprincipled, and selfish as he was, Dr. Matthewson could not be wholly indifferent to a grief such as he had never witnessed but once, and that was years ago; but she who wept before him then was a fair-haired German girl asking reparation for the ruin he had wrought. He had laughed at her, and telling her she would make a splendid queen of tragedy, had bidden her go upon the stage and achieve her fortune, then come to him, and perhaps he would make terms with her. But Rossie was a different creature. She knew nothing of such girls as Yula Van Eisner. She was Rossie, heiress of the Forrest property,—and he walked up and down the room several times, and blew his nose vigorously, and made a feint of wiping his eyes with his perfumed handkerchief, and then came and stood by her, and putting his hand on her bowed head, said to her: