"I know that it is so," she wrote. "I see it in the faces of my friends, I hear it in my mother’s voice, I feel it in my failing strength. Yes, I am surely dying, won’t you come? It is but a little thing for you, and it will do me so much good. Do you really love me, William? I have sometimes feared you didn’t as I loved you. I sometimes thought you might be glad when the grass was growing on my grave, because you then would have no dread lest your proud relatives should know how you paused a moment to look at the frail blossom fading by the wayside. If it is so, William, don’t tell it to me now; let me die believing that you really do love me. Come and tell me so once more, let me hear your voice again; then when I am dead, and they go to lay me down in the very spot where you found me sleeping that summer afternoon, you needn’t join the mourners, for the world might ask why you were there. But when I’m buried, William, and the candles are lighted in my dear old home, then go alone where Nellie lies. It will make you a better man to pray above my grave, and if you know in your secret heart that you have been deceiving me, God will forgive you then. I am growing tired, William, there’s a blur before my eyes and I cannot see. Come quickly, William, do." This letter Ellen carried to the office herself, for she sometimes rode as far as the village with her grandfather, and thus none of the family knew that it was sent, or guessed why, for many days, her face grew brighter with a joyous, expectant look, which Aunt Debby said "came straight from Heaven." The letter reached William just as he was dressing for Charlotte Reeves’ party, and tearing open the envelope, he read it with dim eye and quivering lip, for the writer had a stronger hold on his affections than he had at first supposed. "I will go and see her," he said to himself, "though I can carry her no comfort unless I fabricate some lie. Poor, darling Nellie! It will not be a falsehood to tell her that I love her best of all the world, even though I cannot make her my wife. Perhaps she don’t expect me to do that," and crushing into his pocket the letter, stained with Nellie’s tears and his, he went, as we have seen, to the house of festivity, mingling in the gay scene, and letting no opportunity pass for showing to those around that Jessie Graham was the chosen one, though all the while his thoughts were away in Deerwood, where the dying Nellie waited so anxiously his coming, and whither in a few days he went, taking care to say to Jessie that he was going into the country, and might possibly visit the farm-house before he returned. CHAPTER IX.—NELLIE.