Time was when each succeeding morning of Mr. Tremain's life, the early post brought a similar letter, but in those days his manner of receiving it differed exceedingly from this greeting. Then, he would take it up tenderly, holding it for a few moments before his longing eyes, and perhaps--for he was young and very adoring--raise it to his lips before he broke the seal--which in those days was not a cynical candle and blind moth, but a true lover's knot, with a French sentiment intertwined. Now he eyed it askance for a second or more before he lifted it, and then after balancing it lightly on his open palm, put it down unopened, made his tea, buttered his toast, and opened his newspaper; nor did he glance towards it again until, his breakfast finished, his cigar alight, sitting in the sunshine that flooded his apartment, he took it up and broke the seal. Various emotions passed over his face as he read. Surprise, half anger, half scorn, and lastly, as he came to the final lines, a quiver of pity or tenderness softened the stern outlines of forehead and lips. He laid the open letter on his knee, and as he sat motionless, the increasing noise of the shrill street cries, and the echo of commencing traffic bespoke the reawakening of the great city to one more day of toil and strife and unrest, passed by him unheeded. A breath of the past was mingled with the present, and bore along with it the scent of fresh grass, a mingled perfume of fruit and flowers, a vision of flowing muslin draperies, a lithe, graceful figure, dark, lustreless hair crowning a proud little head, eyes of deepest violet shaded by black, pencilled brows and lashes, a face whose almost dusky colouring flushed in an instant into richest carmine when deeply moved. Ten years had gone by since Philip Tremain, a young barrister struggling for briefs, idle, clever, lazy, and cursed with expectations of money, first met Patricia Hildreth. He was living then in a small city, in the interior of New York State, situated near one of those great lakes so renowned for their beauty and their treachery. On account of his talents and position he was rather the _enfant gâté_ of society in that aristocratic little town; which, by the way, held itself very exclusive, and counted among its residents many blue-blooded descendants of old colonial families; its customs were colonial as well as its traditions, and it looked down with contempt upon its sister city, on the borders of a sister lake, because it had admitted within the doors of hospitality scions of fathers who were known to have made their money in trade.