That night and the following day, there were many who sought admittance to the parlors of Rosalie Sherwood; they would lay the homage of their trifling hearts at her feet. But all these sought in vain—and why was this? Because such admiring tribute was not what the noble woman sought, and because, ere she had risen in the morning, a letter written in the solitude of night, was handed her, which barred and bolted her door against the curious world. “Rosalie! Rosalie! look back through the ten years that are gone, I am answering your letter of long ago, with words—I have a thousand times answered them in my heart, till the thoughts which have been crowded there filled it almost to breaking. We have met, met at last, you and I. But, did you call that a triumph, when you stood in God’s house, and saw them lay their consecrating hands upon me? Heaven forgive me, I was thinking of _you_ then—and thinking too, that if this honor was in any way to be thought a reward, the needful part of it was wanting—you were not there! Yet, you _were_ there, you have written me—ah, but not _Rosalie my wife_, the woman I loved better than _all_ on earth, the _acknowledged_ woman, whose memory I had borne about with me till it was a needful part of my existence. You were by when the people came to see me consecrated:—and I obeyed _your_ call, I saw you, when the people anointed you with the tears of their admiration and praise. If you read my heart at all that day, you knew how I had suffered, that I had grown old in the sorrow; was I mistaken to-night, in the thought that you too were not unmindful of the past—that you were not _satisfied_ with the popular applause? that you also, have been lonely, and wept and sorrowed? “There is but one barrier now in the wide world that shall interpose between us, Rosalie—your own will. If I was ever anything to you, I beseech you think calmly before you answer, and do not let your ‘triumph’ to-night, blind you to the fact, which you once recognized—which can make us happy _yet_.—I trust you as in our younger days; nothing, nothing but your own words, could convince me that you are not worthy to take the highest place among the ladies of this land:—give me only your heart—and let the remembrance that I have been faithful to you through all the past, plead for me, if your pride should rise up to condemn me. Let me come and plead _with_ you, for I know not what I write.” The answer returned to this letter was as follows: