“I know not what change has come over my life, or is to come, but I am to be separated from my mother, intrusted to a guardian I have never seen till now, and sent I know not whither. All that I am told is that our narrow fortune requires I should make an effort for my own support. I am grateful to the adversity that snatches me from a life of thought to one of labor. The weariness of work will be far easier to bear than the repinings of indolence. Self-reproach will be less poignant, too, when not associated with self-indulgence; and, better than all, a thousand times better, I shall feel in my toil some similitude to him whom I love,--feel, when my tired brain seeks rest, some unseen thread links my weariness to his, and blends our thoughts together in our dreams, fellow-laborers at least in life, if not lovers!” When he had read thus far, and was still contemplating the lines, a small slip, carefully sealed in two places, fell from the letter. It was inscribed “My Secret.” Alfred tore it open eagerly. The contents were very brief, and ran thus:-- “She whom I had believed to be my mother is not so. She is nothing to me. I am an orphan. I know nothing of those belonging to me, nor of myself, any more than that my name is _not_, 'Clara Morris.'” Layton's first impulse, as he read, was to exclaim, “Thank God, the dear child has no tie to this woman!” The thought of her being her daughter was maddening. And then arose the question to his mind, by what link had they been united hitherto? Mrs. Morris had been ever to him a mysterious personage, for whom he had invented numberless histories, not always to her advantage. But why or through what circumstances this girl had been associated with her fortunes, was a knot he could find no clew to. There arose, besides, another question, why should this connection now cease, by what change in condition were they to be separated, and was the separation to be complete and final? Clara ought to have told him more; she should have been more explicit. It was unfair to leave him with an unsolved difficulty which a few words might have set clear. He was half angry with her for the torture of this uncertainty, and yet--let us own it--in his secret heart he hugged this mystery as a new interest that attached him to life. Let a man have ever so little of the gambler in his nature,--and we have never pictured Layton as amongst that prudent category,--and there will be still a tendency to weigh the eventualities of life, as chances inclining now to this side, now to that “I was lucky in that affair,” “I was unfortunate there,” are expressions occasionally heard from those who have never played a card or touched a dice-box. And where does this same element play such a part as when a cloud of doubt and obscurity involves the fate of one we love?