She shook Harriet by both hands, kissed her once more, and even cried a little before she made a hasty dash from the room to the stairs. At the second landing, outside Mr. Hinchford's apartments, she remembered the letter--the evidence of Harriet's past romance in which Sidney Hinchford played no part. Mattie pictured the future as very bright and glowing after this--the two who had been ever kind to her, and helped so greatly towards her better life, would come together after all, and make the best and truest couple in the world! Mattie's training--moral training it may be called--was scarcely a perfect one. She had been taught what was honest and truthful; she was far away for ever from the old life; but the fine feelings--the sensitiveness to the _minutiæ_ of goodness--were wanting just then. The means to the end were not particularly to be studied, so that the end was good. Harriet had done no wrong, merely been duped by a specious scamp for awhile; but keep the story dark for the sake of the suspicions it cast on minds inclined to doubt good in anything--and for the sake of general peace, make away with the letter--Sidney Hinchford's property as much as the locket she stole from him when she was eleven years of age. Harriet Wesden was silent from fear and shame; her nature was a timid one, and shrank back from painful avowals; Mattie did not look at the subject in the best light, and thought of promoting happiness by secrecy, a dangerous experiment, that may tend at any moment to an explosion. Mattie opened the drawing-room door softly and looked in. Mr. Hinchford had not appeared yet, and she entered and went direct to the mantel-piece, on which the letter had lain ever since its arrival. The letter was gone! "Oh! dear!--oh! dear!--what's to be done now?" cried Mattie, looking from the centre table to the side table on which was Sidney's desk, unlocked. Mattie did not think of appearances when she opened the desk and began turning over its contents with a hasty hand--a suspicious-looking operation, in which she was discovered by Mr. Hinchford, who entered the room suddenly. "Mattie," he said, sternly, "I should not have thought that you would have been guilty of this meanness." Mattie, with her bonnet and shawl on, and awry from her past movements, with her face pale and haggard from want of sleep, remained with her hands in the desk, looking hard at the new comer. Her instinct was to tell the truth--there was no harm in it. "I am looking for the letter which came for Mr. Sidney--I want it back." "Want it back!--what letter?" "The letter which has been on the mantel-piece all the week--it was Miss Harriet's--she wishes to have it back, to put something else in it." "Bless my soul!--very odd," said Mr. Hinchford; "I'll give it to Miss Harriet myself--there's no occasion to rummage my boy's desk about. I don't like it, Mattie--I am extremely displeased."