Her face turned crimson as she spoke. She had met Mona several times, but this was the first reference either of them had made to the original subject of debate. "Have you?" said Mona quietly. "Yes. Would you mind reading the letter? I should like to know if there is anything I ought to alter." Mona read the letter. It was headed by a showy crest and address-stamp, and it was without exception the most pathetic and the most ridiculous production she had ever seen. It was very long, and very sentimental: it made repeated reference to "your passionate love"; and, to Mona's horror, it wound up with the line about the martyrs. However, it had one saving feature. Between the beginning and the end, Matilda did contrive to give expression to the conviction that she had done wrong in meeting her correspondent, and to the determination that she never would do it again. Compared with this everything else mattered little. "Is that what you would have said?" she asked eagerly, as Mona finished reading it. "It would be valueless if it were," said Mona, smiling. "He wants your views, not mine. But in quoting that line you are creating for yourself a lofty tradition that will not always be easy to live up to. I speak to myself as much as to you, for it was I who set you the example--for evil or good. You and I burn our boats when we allow ourselves to repeat a line like that." "I want to burn them," said Matilda eagerly, only half understanding what was in Mona's mind. "I am quite sure you have burned yours. Then you don't want me to write it over again?" "No," said Mona reflectively. "You have said definitely what you intended to say, and few girls could have done as much under the circumstances. Moreover, you have said it in your own way, and that is better than saying it in some one else's way. No, I would not write it over again." "Thanks awfully. I am very glad you think it will do. It is a great weight off my mind to have it done. I owe a great deal to you, Miss Maclean." "I owe you a great deal," said Mona, colouring. "You have taught me a lesson against hasty judgment. When you came into the shop to buy blue ribbon, I certainly did not think you capable of that amount of moral pluck," and she glanced at the letter on Matilda's lap. "What you must have thought of us!" exclaimed Matilda, blushing in her turn. "Two stuck-up, provincial--cats! Tell me, Miss Maclean, did Dr Dudley know then--what I know about you?" Matilda was progressing. She saw that Mona winced at the unceasing reference to Lady Munro, so she attempted a periphrasis. "He does not know now." "Then I shall like Dr Dudley as long as I live. He is sarcastic and horrid, but he must be one of the people you were talking of the other day who see the invisible."