"Well, good-bye really now," she says, with quivering lips. "I feel more cheerful, more hopeful. I don't feel as if--I were going to cry--another tear." With this she breaks into a perfect storm of tears, and tearing herself from his embrace, runs away from him down the avenue out of sight of his longing eyes. CHAPTER XXXII. "Why, look you, how you storm! I would be friends with you, and have your love." --_Merchant of Venice._ "She is indeed perfection." --_Othello._ The fourth day before that fixed upon for leaving Brooklyn, Molly, coming down to breakfast, finds upon her plate a large envelope directed in her grandfather's own writing,--a rather shaky writing now, it is true, but with all the remains of what must once have been bold and determined calligraphy. "Who can it be from?" says Molly, regarding the elaborate seal and crest with amazement,--both so scarlet, both so huge. "Open it, dear, and you will see," replies Letitia, who is merely curious, and would not be accused of triteness for the world. Breaking the alarming seal, Molly reads in silence; while Letitia, unable to bear suspense, rises and reads it also over her sister's shoulder. It consists of a very few lines, and merely expresses a desire--that is plainly a command--that Molly will come the following day to Herst, as her grandfather has something of importance to say to her. "What can it be?" says Molly, glancing over her shoulder at Mrs. Massereene, who has taken the letter to re-read it. "Something good, perhaps." Wistfully. "There may be some luck in store for you." "Hardly. I have ceased to believe in my own good luck," says Molly, bitterly. "At all events, I suppose I had better go. Afterward I might reproach myself for having been inattentive to his wishes." "Go, by all means," says Letitia; and so it is arranged. Feeling tired and nervous, she arrives the next day at Herst, and is met in the hall by her friend the housekeeper in subdued spirits and the unfailing silk gown, who receives her in a good old motherly fashion and bestows upon her a warm though deferential kiss. "You have come, my dear, and I am glad of it," she says in a mysterious tone. "He has been asking for you incessant. Miss Amherst, she is away from home." This in a pleased, confidential tone, Miss Amherst being distinctly unpopular among the domestics, small and great. "Mr. Amherst he sent her to the Latouches' for a week,--against her will, I must say. And the captain, he has gone abroad." "Has he?" Surprised. "Yes, quite suddent like, and no one the wiser why. When last he come home, after being away a whole day, he seemed to me daft like,--quite," says Mrs. Nesbitt, raising her eyes and hands, whose cozy plumpness almost conceals the well-worn ring that for twenty years of widowhood has rested there alone, "quite as though he had took leave of his senses." "Yes?" says Molly, in a faltering tone, feeling decidedly guilty.