Then she glanced down upon it. It was addressed in a delicate feminine penmanship, and the date of the post-mark was not a week old. A sudden suspicion fired her blood; her pansy eyes blazed black as sloes as she turned them on Percy's tell-tale face. "So!" she said, slowly and mockingly; "there is a cause for all this excess of morality, _mon ami_, is there?" "Give me the letter, please?" was his only response. She took a step back, and looked at him with defiant eyes. "I demand to know the contents of this letter before I return it!" she said. "If it in no way relates to our proposed separation, you will not fear to show it to me. If it does, I have a right to know." He looked at her coldly, and his words, as they fell, pierced her like poisoned arrows. "You have no right to demand any thing of the kind," he said, quietly. "Our relations are simply with each other. We have always understood that, I believe. You are not that most despised object in your own eyes, Dolores--_a wife_. Therefore you have _no_ right to question me concerning my correspondence. The letter, please." She threw it at his feet. "Take it!" she cried, "but remember, Percy Durand, as God hears me, no other woman shall be your wife while I live." He turned toward the door without a word. But as he went, he took her latch-key from his pocket and dropped it carelessly on the open leaf of her ebony desk. That one act, said more effectually than the bitterest words could have said, that all was at an end between them. He was no longer her comrade, her friend, her lover, who came and went at will; he was a stranger, who, if he ever came again, would come in the capacity of a guest. She flung out her arms with a wild cry: "Percy, Percy, come back! Do not leave me like this--I cannot bear it." He turned back, moved by the passionate pain of her voice. As he turned, his eye fell upon an old photograph, lying among a parcel of letters, in the open tray of a partially packed trunk. "Who is this, Dolores?" he asked, picking up the card, and standing as if transfixed. Dolores went forward and looked over his shoulder. She thought he was relenting toward her, and if a reconciliation seemed possible, she desired it at any cost. Ah! pitying heaven! how at the mercy of the weakest man, the strongest woman is, if she loves him. "That?" she said, laying her hand gently on his arm, "that is an old picture of a school-mate of mine,--oh, how long ago it seems! She was the only intimate friend I ever had until I met Mrs. Butler. And yet I have utterly lost all trace of her. Our correspondence died a natural death, before I had been two years abroad." "What was her name?" asked Percy, and his heart almost stood still to listen to her reply.